Question on the WKO+
How many of you use the WKO+ to calc all your power and what ever else. The way the economy is today I'm just trying to save $$!
Is there something else out there a person can use because I really do not have the $$ to shell out. Ecspecially affter just ordering a PowerTap. I've never trained with power before so this will all be new to me. So I guess what I'm asking can I figure my power on the bike without using WKO+?
I'm pretty new here and only on my 3rd week of the Intermediate OS plan. This is great!! Just wish there was more time in the day to go through all this stuff here on EN!!
Thanks for the help in advance,
Rich
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Comments
Hi Rich,
First of all, welcome to the EN Team. While there are other tools available, the best way to maximize the investment you just made with the PT wheel is to purchase both WKO+ and the EN power webinar. Owning a power meter is the first step to training and racing with power, see this discussion going elswhere in the forums on about an EN Power Meter Badge.
Here are your other options:
Power Agent comes with your Power Tap (also available for download www.cycleops.com/poweragentDownload.aspx)
Golden Cheeta (goldencheetah.org) is an open source application that works with power meters (I have no experience with this).
SportTracks is also free software (www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks) (I have no experience with this either).
RaceDay is similar to WKO+ but uses different terms than the ones discussed in this forum, also it's $125 (http://www.physfarm.com/inside/raceday.html)
- cary
Rich,
Check out Golden Cheetah. This is a free software download. They use Dr Phil's (Physfarm) terms and calculations. You'll need to familiarize yourself with xPower (Similiar to NP) and Bike Score (TSS). They are very similiar calcs. My xPower was 167 @ IMOO vs. NP of 164.
http://goldencheetah.org/
You can download your power files and do plenty of analysis.
Here is the background on the calcs
http://www.physfarm.com/bikescore.pdf
His book -
http://physfarm.com/store/index.php...c51bd175fe
Physfarm has software, similiar to wKO but you'd need to buy it.
How hard or easy is it to use the WKO+?
Does it help with figuring out what wattages to use and HR as well?
WKO+ seems to have been the gold standard for quite some time, however I have heard a lot of complaints since they redesigned the interface in the newest version. WKO+ is also a no-go for me due to lack of native mac support. Golden Cheetah is available on a variety of OS platforms and I have very briefly messed around with it, but I am currently using the previously mentioned RaceDay Apollo. I'm on a trial version now, still debating about what SW I will go with once I have to shell out.
I have Parallels and works pretty well for most applications. I installed a WKO+ trial on my VM running Windows XP and the application works fine, however my problem is I sync my 310XT to OSX, so importing my power files to the VM is a bit of a pain. You can share files between the two OS, but it would be simpler if you just synced your power meter with the Windows file system, something I prefer not to do. Alternatively to Parallels, you can always use BootCamp for free. Of course you still need to get a copy of Windows, I'm fortunate enough to have access for free through graduate school, but to answer your question, Windows 7 works fine in both Parallels and Bootcamp for Intel series Macs, minus a few things like webcam support.
Aside from that, you are left with RaceDay and Golden Cheetah with native OSX support, RaceDay is much closer to a full fledged WKO-type product, but costs $$ as mentioned before.
Hi Mark -- I'm running WKO+ on Windows 7, via VMware Fusion on a Macbook. It behaves nicely on 32-bit windows. At least a few months ago, death and bad happened with it and PowerAgent when attempting to run them on 64-bit Windows.