out west where? I’m surrounded by punchy 100-300 ft climbs. of course, I’m past out west and into the Pacific zone.
Sure, there’s lumpy parts, but you’ve also got big valleys and big mountains. Skagit Valley or Snoqualmie Valley for long flat stretches. Head into the Cascades and you get miles at 6-8%. Cougar Mt gives a pretty consistent 15-min climb accessible from Seattle.
In midcoast Maine, I can rack up 5000-6000 ft of climbing over a 75 mile ride and never get above 250 ft above sea level.
I use a 30s rolling average when I’m trying to hit a particular power number. This is something I picked up from reading Coggan who asserts that the physiological response to stress while cycling follows a similar window.
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This is my first season using a Stages PM, but I can’t imagine effectively taking advantage of PM data from a watch screen.
I set my Wahoo to always display power zone on the LEDs for quick reference (1 light for Z1, 2 for Z2, 3 for Z3, etc), and for brevets / rides where I need to follow a specific route, I added an average power metric above the route view.
ooh, this is good, thanks. I’ve been trying much lower rolling averages (3, 5 second) and they’re just too volatile during certain parts of the ride.
This honestly sounds like a convention to make meeting your goals easier but that’s it. There’s no way going 450w for 10 seconds with 20 seconds of rest results in the same physiological adaptations a steady 150w will.
Reminded me to look at the data from my 400 the weekend-before-last.
My main focus was to just ride consistently in Z2, targeting 150-170. Looks like I still sandbagged quite a bit in Z1 
(was a social ride too, I stuck with a friend the whole time)
I’d be curious to hear how others are using power for long distance rides
my ancient lezyle will display both instantaneous power and average over some interval so that I can stare at a screen trying to hit a target instead of watching where I’m going. honestly I find cadence as useful as power for most of the pootling around I do.
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Keep in mind “z1” starts at 0 so it includes coasting. Honestly, that’s super good. Z1 is usually the most utilized zone on my rides due to coasting. So a z2 ride for me often is over 50% z1.
A “high intensity” ride might look more like this - but still 37% z1.
The exception being zwift where I never coast, so that time gets distributed into other zones.
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“Remove zeros”
There’s some reasoning behind it, but I’m not going to go to great lengths to defend the concept. Pretty sure it’s mentioned in TRPM.
To be clear, the training stress to which one can adapt is relatively similar, the fatigue is very much not. A ride with similar average and normalized power would generate less fatigue than a ride with less average power but the same normalized power. TSS is the same.
People coast?
my problem is actually on a slight uphill i think my bad brain says “you are going slow” and then I’m at 320 watts when i really should be at 245.
Except this is the dumbest feature on head units. It makes your averages all wrong and fucks up all your metrics.
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Sounds like you should do some intervals to practice what it feels like. Or use your lungs. Honestly the “can talk easily” “can talk but it’s difficult” “can only give one word answers” descriptors for zones make a lot of sense to me.
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yeah WTF the dumbest of all averaging techniques
i had a fun time with my starges bike (excellent product) this morning. it lives in my garage. i hop on the zwifts and the thing is saying i’m producing like…33 watts. took me a few minutes and then i finally remembered that i hadn’t zeroed it since it was like 70 degrees in the garage, and this morning it was 34. zeroed and it was working great again.
i didn’t realize it would be that far off!
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yeah it auto-zeroes while you’re not riding so it would have autozeroed the last time the cranks were awake. also make sure the batteries aren’t low as it seems those cranks dont do well with a low battery. this happens sometimes on the regular PMs, but it feels worse on the sb20 somehow. my left crank was low the other day while i was just easy pedaling and it said i was riding at like 30/70 balance. battery said 7% so i popped in a new battery and it was fine.
ok thank you! wow it’s great having support right here
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there is no snow here and i need to be training so i have been riding more than usual for wintertime. i did 90 minutes on zwift yesterday. that little digital dude is surprisingly motivating
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which is better for ftp test? zwift ramp test or zwift 20 minute interval?
ski season is basically over, at least the hard training part
now back to bikes.
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Ramp test is nice because you don’t need to know a number to try to hold but tends to exaggerate results for sprinty people. 20 minute test is preferable if you already have an idea of your 20 minute power. Iirc the Zwift activity only has an easy warmup before hand. Most 20 minute protocols have you do a vo2 interval before your test in an effort to use up your anaerobic tank or whatever.