When your power meter goes out, what do you do?
For last week's long ride, for the first time I had some issues with my Quarq. I'm curious what people do in this instance. I'm really looking for a checklist of what to do for that ride at that time. Here's what I did....
First, I got PO'd because I was 5 minutes into a 100 mile ride and my PM was reading very low. After a few minutes, I stopped and calibrated (as I had not done this before I left my house). I started riding again and now the numbers were different but still very low and no where near where they were supposed to be not matter how I felt. After 5 more minutes of being PO'd, I decided to stop and power my Garmin 510 off, wait a bit, and then restart it. Once I did this, the numbers seemed to be accurate and all was well with the world again.
My takeaways from this: 1. change the battery in my Quarq and 2. learn what to do if this happens again, which is the reason for this post.
Should I have immediately restarted the Garmin to see if that would have fixed the problem? If so, do I need to stop to do this or can I do it while riding?
Thanks for any help you can give me. 4 weeks out from my first IM and I will literally die if I do not have my powermeter.
Brandon
Comments
My very first Ironman my PM crapped out at mile 2 (if I got that far) and didn’t work the rest of the race. This was after training all summer with it and previously having no issues. Rest assured you can still have a good race without a PM (I did).
One of the things you should be doing on your rides is taking stock of how your IM watts feel. You should also be getting the feel of your other power zones too so that you at least have an idea of how hard you are riding without looking at your PM. Obviously, depending on the day (sometimes we feel strong, sometimes we feel weak) that RPE may not be entirely accurate. This is a great reason to also track HR data on your rides. Generally there will be a correlation between x HR and y watts. If your PM goes bonkers on race day start watching the HR that you’ve been seeing in training and correlate that with how your IM watts feel and make adjustments as necessary. If your PM isn’t there on race day, I would recommend riding easier than you think you should be (especially for your first IM). You’ll be well prepared for the run and if you think you left anything on the table during the bike try and get it back the last 6 miles of the run.
The other piece of advice I have is not to panic. IM is a very long day, it’s really important to keep a level head. If the PM goes down, say, aww that stinks, forget about it and keep pedaling. At least half the field won’t have PM’s. Out of those that do at least 70% have no clue how to use them so you’ll be at a huge advantage already having trained with one up to race day.
Worst case scenario is you lose your PM on the bike, you ride too easy, have a great run! You end up signing up for another IM because you had such a great experience and know you can go faster next time
I'll let others weigh in on what to do with the PM to get it to work. As a shirpa for my wife during her first IM, I utterly failed to get her PM working on race morning. Ultimate Shirpa Fail. Like Doug said above, she held back on the bike and rocked the run.
But in general, it might be a good idea to have a back-up "indicator" that you're calibrating during training. That indicator can either be perceived effort or heart-rate (speed is a very distant 4th place indicator). Maybe remove power from the main screen of your head unit on a few rides, and only focus on heart-rate or PE. And then take that ride back to the computer later and really study the results to compare your heart-rate or PE to the actual power numbers.
The other guys already mentioned that we should always pay attention to how certain zones 'feel' during all of those training rides. HR is a helpful here, too. But, both RPE and HR can be a bit deceiving on race day.
My mantra in this kind of scenario is 'just keep it smooth & steady'. I might not be able to blindly call my watts but I'm pretty sure that I can tell you when I'm going too hard up the hills and needing to recover on the downs and the flats. So, I make sure that I ride ez enough to have a low VI by feel. The smoother the ride, over the longer course, will net speeds that are plenty fast enough when riding blind. Yes, you may be leaving a bit of time on the course by going slightly easier than what you would have with power. But, let's be real. Goal IM watts are pretty easy compared to the rest of the year. Your safety net is to ride like you'll finish feeling like you could ride another hour....or run a marathon. However, you want to look at it
Short courses are a much more volatile. Had this happen to me this year at an oly. I KNOW I left some time on the course. But, I still had a very good bike split and, as surprised as I was, had a great run (for me).
Was told to always change the battery the week before the race. And, no harm in putting an extra battery in whatever tool kit you like.
Oh, and getting PO'd is a waste of energy. It's only b/c you want to see you TSS at the end of the day, to keep the CTL/ATL/TSB consistent. When this kind of thing happens, you can quit on the day (and get nothing out of the training or race) or you can quickly shift your thinking to pre-technology times of training and racing...old school!
My PM failed to work on IM race day. Thankfully, I had paid attention to RPE and HR. My bike effort was just fine. Even now, I experiment with guessing what zone I am in by effort (my HRM is dead right now) and I am usually pretty close. I recommend and ditto what everyone else said.
And things going wrong in training is good! I learned to charge my Di2 before a big day when it crapped out on me in the wrong gear on an 80 miler. Michael Phelps' coach used to make bad things happen to him in practice so he would be ready on race day. One was to make him swim without goggles- guess what happened to him in the Olympics!? Yup- and he knew exactly how to handle it.
So- expect things to go wrong. don't panic, just readjust.
Fingers crossed for race day!
I've lately been paying a lot of attention to:
So I think I have the idea of what I should replace power with for a properly executed bike, but what are the technical things I should try to get my powermeter working again before giving up on it....example. restart garmin, recalibrate, change battery, etc.
I'm fairly new to using power and was just curious of what the troubleshooting order should be if the PM is not reading properly or not working.
Thanks again for all of the responses. I really like the idea of doing a long ride with no power and trying to properly pace it and then afterward analyzing the data to see how I did. Almost like that should be a requirement at some point during the training.
I actually had a similar issue happen to me on Friday, during my first of 2x RR's this weekend: PT dropped calibration after my first admin stop and was reading about 50w too high. I stopped to recalibrate and that fixed it...then it happened again after my next stop, and I learned you can recalibrate a PT on the fly without stopping (be recalibrate, I mean manually by going through the calibration menu on the Garmin screen). When I finished the ride I swung by WB and they installed new torque tubes and bearings in the PT so I basically have a new hub.
Anyway, if I were racing with a Quarq I'd probably:
In other words, you're trying the "I can keep riding while I do this" stuff first.
If you have to troubleshoot while you are riding, being safe should be your first priority.
So many things could be going on at the same time....
catching your breath from a strong swim and running through transition,
getting settled on the bike while you might still be sliding your foot into a shoe while pedaling,
avoiding other cyclists that may be going slower or staying out of the way of the those passing quickly,
trying to keep the bike upright at slower speeds while troubleshooting and avoiding the road shoulder or curb or pothole, etc.
I went through this at my oly. My vision is average, at best. With swim eyes and wet sunglasses (until I removed them), my view of my Garmin screen was not clear. Very distracted by trying to do all of the above while trying to scroll through the screens, I could've mauled several cyclists, hit a dog, and rode back into the river and I never would have known the difference.
After a few minutes, I recognized how drunk I was riding and decided to get some speed up for better stability and get out a couple of miles to let the masses thin out before I gave it another shot.
Point being to anyone reading, safety/stable riding/minimal crowds/good roads before you stick your nose on the screen and give it 90% of your attention for a period of time that is much longer than your usual glances. Nothing wrong with pulling over for a couple of minutes to save yourself from a DNF, or causing another racer's DNF.