07-07.-2009
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| Registered User | | Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,997
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  Re: power meter
O.K. that was my attempt to match Alex in pithy responses...
Basically in the context of cycling a power meter measures the power in watts a rider generates while riding the bike. It's a fancy form of cycling computer that also measures more traditional things like speed, distance, cadence, heart rate, etc.
But the power portion and from it an accurate measure of Calories burned is incredibly useful information to folks engaged in structured training and or racing. Basically it's like an automotive engineer finally having a method of measuring horsepower and being able to tune an engine for best performance and to accurately measure fuel consumption and engine efficiency. It allows the rider to tune aerodynamics if that's important to their racing (triathletes and time trialists care a lot about aerodynamics) or to see tradeoffs with overall body and bike weight, to tailor training to the needs of their events and to assess the quality of training sessions. Maybe most importantly it gives an objective measure of cycling fitness that's independent of things like headwinds, tailwinds, rough or smooth roads, working drafting other riders, etc. If you can sustain more power for durations important to your events then your fitness is improving, you can't necessarily say that about speed, cadence, heart rate or even distance travelled when you consider uphill vs downhill terrain, wind direction, group riding, etc.
Anyway, a lot of us use power meters to guide our training and racing. In the end it's just another measurement device but a very sophisticated device that's very useful for competitive cyclists. It's certainly not essential but it sure can be helpful to someone that understands how to use the data it collects.
-Dave  |
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