to non zero or to zero avg

jdcsbrsk8

Hi,

I have a power tap, garmin 500 and WKO.  My question is:

On my garmin data recording setting for cadence and power I can either do non-zero average or zero average.  What should I do?  Also, does the setting on the garmin only affect what is shown on the garmin?  Or does it affect the data gets loaded into WKO?

I have the data recording set to every second.

Thanks!

Jim

TH3 FRB

Include zero...that's your true average and also what WKO+ does.

mgraffeo

First, this choice doesn't affect what is stored and later analyzed on the computer. So, it depends on what you want to see. If you never coast or stop, the two will be the same and it won't matter. If you stop a lot, what info are you looking for: how hard you rode when you were riding, or the average across all minutes you were out there.

For IM racing, the non-zero average is a good approximation of normalized power, for those of us with a head unit that doesn't calculate NP, so that's why I usually have my LYC set to exclude zeros.

William Jenks

This is totally a matter of personal choice. If you are interested in getting your NP on the fly before that comes out on Garmin....

If you do NZAP and ride pretty steadily, it will be close to the NP. This is not for any *good* reason...it's just that the NP is a few percent higher than the AP and so is the NZAP, although for different reasons.

If you know in advance what your VI is likely to be, you can divide your NP target power by that number (making it slightly LOWER) and then target that AP (with zeros!).