Is Power for Me?
Lots of new peeps, lots of emails asking quotes on PM's and lots of discussions about this or that monitor. Time to step back and talk about this more generally.
Wiki WorkerPeeps, please make this into wiki post. Thanks!
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Should I purchase a powermeter?
No doubt purchasing a powermeter is a large financial investment. $1500-2k is a lot of dough to hang onto a bike! But while people understand the $$$$ investment, they often don't realize or understand the true costs of a powermeter. Specifically:
You need to be prepared to make a significant time and head investment in learning how to use, train, and race with your powermeter. Trust us, the racks in T1 are filled with people riding $5k bikes with $2k Cateyes manufactured by Saris, SRM, etc. That is, these people have no idea to use their powermeter as a training and racing tool, and they are essentially using a very expensive powermeter as a speedometer.
Consider:
- The monitor: every monitor has it's quirks -- set up, gotta get it talking correctly to the PM, your computer (via a cable...where's that USB driver? How do I install it?), what buttons do I push while riding to make it do what I want. There's a learning curve.
- The Software: you'll want to download (monitor + cables + device driver + computer OS + power software) your power files into WKO+ or other tool to help you understand it. There's a learning curve here, of what the hell am I looking at, how do I make these fancy charts I see in the forum, etc.
- Terms and Definitions: Pnorm, Pavg, IF, TSS, VI, PMC, ATL, CTL, TSB...and on and on
. What do they mean, how do I use them for training and racing? - How to train with power: see above. Do I want/can I handle all of this data? Does it wig me out? Does it take away my enjoyment of the bike? I just wanna ride!!!
- How to race with power: spreadsheets, funky tables, "wattage gears," and other stuff.
All of the above very likely requires you to:
- Yes, buy a book, or our Power Webinar, or some addtional software. This is probably the big one. If you can't be bothered to spend an additional $100 to help you understand and use properly the $1500 tool you just bought...then you're probably better off not spending the $1500 in the first place.
- Yes, read that book, understand it, listen to a ton of podcasts, ie, make a signficant time investment.
- Yes, be prepared to deal with some friction -- my computer doesn't see my monitor, how do I download my file? My power numbers seem whack today, is it the PM, the monitor, or both? The list goes on and on.
- Yes, be prepared to be confused, frankly, for a while as you figure all of this out.
Our advice is to do an honest assessment of yourself, your personality, your skills (and interest in learning new ones) and ask yourself if power is truly for you? We, the coaches, have coached and known many, many people who simply had no business buying a powermeter because, for many reasons, they just didn't or weren't willing to make the investments above.
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Comments
Rich -
There is already a wiki entry called "Before you purchase a power meter" Here is the text:
Do I need to have a powermeter to train inside EN?
We probably get this email every day in the admin account, from people on the outside and sometimes from you. Here's the deal:
Should I purchase a powermeter?
Training with Power requires a significant time and headspace investment. It's a just a fact that the cost of business in the power world is:
But if you can't be bothered to do this stuff above, if you want to just get your bike and ride, or know yourself well enough to know that the stuff above will just drive you nuts, you don't have the patience, the techie skillz, etc for it, then stop reading right here...DO NOT BUY A POWERMETER!! The tri-world is full of people who've spent $$$$$$ on PM's but can't be bothered to learn how to use it. Dont' be that guy!
Seems to me that your more recent remarks could be merged into the current wiki entry - is that what you want? I'll give that a try now, and then can alwasy revert back to the original old entry if you want this one as a separate new one.
Al, thanks for the edits. Yeah, I was sure I had written that at some point, or many times, in the past