Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Amazing

On Monday I went to the yearly local crit race which is held once a year after the Tour the France. You know those post-Tour-de-France crits in which guys who rode the Tour de France do their thing for a few or more euro's and you can actually "touch" your Tour heroes. 

Before the pros "race" you also have a race for elite riders without a contract. Some of them are however sponsored well (teams). Those guys also ride a high speed and it's still a very "nice" level to compete in. I normally don't see these kinds of races but I am quite amazed from what I have seen.

From the approximately 50-60 riders I think there were 6 riders with a powermeter: 2 SRMs, 2 Quarqs, 2 Power2max. And mind you the racing gear and equipment they rode are not the least expensive.

So here a list (not exhaustive / in a random order) of benefits from training and racing with a powermeter:

1) Accurate performance measurement: you measure output (watts) and not input (heart rate)
2) You can train at the right traininglevels (vo2max, threshold, etc.) and
3) train specifically for the demands of an event.
4) You can effectively monitor your progress: how about your improvement in x seconds, x minutes, x hours power output? and
5) plan towards peak performance using the concepts of ATL, CTL and TSB.
6) It will help define your strengths and weaknesses and
7) tell you how you generate your power (high/low cadence , high/low torque) and guidance to change. 
8) Also it will help you to optimize your aerodynamics: by using certain methods (e.g Chung method) you can estimate benefits of aero equipment / position and 
9) it can help you with defining your racing strategy and pacing strategy
10) It can be of help to "optimize" weight by converting joules (energy) to calories and guide for eating during a ride/race and 
11) will help in training more effectively per minute spend on cycling (and no more "junk miles"). And last but not least 
12) insight in performance can motivate, because you will definitely improve!!!!

Just leave it with the normal wheels, forget about those 1000 euro carbon ones: buy a powermeter!!! and spend some time to get used to the concepts, analyses and applications. 

When you have no idea what to do with it or how to start ask the layman ;)

One last remark:


Source: twitterpic CyclingPowerLab

No comments:

Post a Comment