# New Power meter. How to use it on a century?



## ziscwg

Just got a power meter and should be able to get a reasonable FTP

How would you use it on a century ride? 

Or is it even of any real use?


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## 55x11

ideally its best if you ride with PM for a while.

For flat 100 mile ridden solo you want to keep constant power the entire time, whatever you can hold for 100 miles.

Most century rides are not flat, have SAG stops, traffic lights etc., and ridden with others.

Still set a threshold and try not to exceed it no matter what.
Say, if your FTP is 270, try not to exceed 300, at least not for more than a few seconds.
Nice and steady. 

The problem with the approach of just riding at FTP entire time is if you ride in the group, you may want to exceed it for short time to stay on the wheel or close the gap (and then recover by reducing your power while drafting). Or, if there is short steep hill, and the best strategy may be to go a bit harder than "average" power, and then coast on the downhill and recover.

Sometimes watching your Normalized Power is more useful for this purposes. But it requires spending some time watching it over several long rides with PM.


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## ericm979

55x11 pretty much nailed it.

But the data will be useful for analysis later even if you ignore it during the ride.


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## ziscwg

55x11 said:


> ideally its best if you ride with PM for a while.
> 
> For flat 100 mile ridden solo you want to keep constant power the entire time, whatever you can hold for 100 miles.
> 
> Most century rides are not flat, have SAG stops, traffic lights etc., and ridden with others.
> 
> Still set a threshold and try not to exceed it no matter what.
> Say, if your FTP is 270, try not to exceed 300, at least not for more than a few seconds.
> Nice and steady.
> 
> The problem with the approach of just riding at FTP entire time is if you ride in the group, you may want to exceed it for short time to stay on the wheel or close the gap (and then recover by reducing your power while drafting). Or, if there is short steep hill, and the best strategy may be to go a bit harder than "average" power, and then coast on the downhill and recover.
> 
> Sometimes watching your Normalized Power is more useful for this purposes. But it requires spending some time watching it over several long rides with PM.


Thanks,
I have used the HR on a number of centuries and it's helped keep me in check. 

This next century is about 4500 ft of climbing.


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## Local Hero

ziscwg said:


> Thanks,
> I have used the HR on a number of centuries and it's helped keep me in check.
> 
> This next century is about 4500 ft of climbing.


stay within comfortable power output on the climbs!


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## Mr645

After adding power and HR to the typical speed and cadence I find that I use the HR more then anything else. I know if my HR gets above 150, I am at a point where I am expending energy and if I stay below 147 I can pretty much maintain that for hours. Power is helpful but with wind gusts and elevation, it harder to determine how hard I am working with the power going from 400 to zero if I stop pedaling for a few seconds.


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## Donn12

ziscwg said:


> Just got a power meter and should be able to get a reasonable FTP
> 
> How would you use it on a century ride?
> 
> Or is it even of any real use?


you can use it to make sure you keep yourself in check for the bigger climbs. you can also use it to make sure you aren't pushing too hard if you know what your actual FTP is - i.e. if your FTP is 270 you should be able to generate 270 for one hour strait....try to generate 270 strait for the 5 hours you would spend going 100 miles and you will have a problem.

To me if I want to lower my HR and make sure I have plenty of juice for a climb coming up I use 3 second avg power and make sure I am 90% of ftp or less....HR drops much quicker tun if I am at 100 105 etc


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## spdntrxi

since you are new too it.. I would try to figure out you FTP (Search) then pace yourself under it for climbs so you don't bonk. I figure you are going to riding for 5-6+ hours depending on terrain ... obviously going to stop, coast, eat, socialize etc etc.. I would just pay attention while climbing.


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## HyperSprite

People may disagree with me but I say for now, collect the data, have fun watching the numbers go up and down and look at it later. This goes for HR as well. 

Actually, now that you have power, HR is useless. Never limit yourself based on your HR unless directed by a doctor. It is a muscle, push it and it will get stronger and then oddly, wont go as high when you push it.

Power is excellent but you need at least 3 months of solid efforts to really get a sense of what it is telling you and when, if ever, you should limit yourself. 

Even if you know your FTP, that is not going to do a whole lot of good over a long ride. Lets say you discover you have a 250w FTP, that is a MAX effort at 1 hour. At 4 hours that number might tail down to 150w. Further, no matter what, if there are real climbs, staying below 350w may be impossible and still be moving. 

Here is an example of a century I did last weekend, it was really me showing an out of town friend a local club ride, then two great climbs with a lot of windy flats in between and grabbing lunch, shutting the bull, etc. 

Notice, while it is mostly lower than my max numbers, (had to do the county line sprint) it still follows the rough shape of my normal curve:









So the bottom line is, just ride.


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## Alumini

To summarize, the TO got a Powermeter, but has no idea how to use it effectively. Well, ...

The bottom line is, for endurance rides (I am talking 100 miles+) (unlike races) don't go above 80% of your FTP at all times, which means stay in the "endurance" (L2) or lower "tempo" (L3) levels and keep away from the lactate threshold. Well, it can be, say 85% in an earlier stage of the ride, if there is the possibility to relax later, like if there's a climb with the following descent at the beginning of the ride, or you know there's a steeper climb towards the end of the ride and you know you'll be too tired to go above 70% there. The longer the distance the more likely you'll want to stick to L2 (56-75% of FTP). I am not going into proper nutrition which also has to go with that.

I'll recommend to make yourself familiar with basics of Powermeter training, like with "The Road Cyclists Guide To Training By Power - C.Howe" or "Training and Racing With A Powermeter - H.Allen,Dr.C.Coggan" for example. There are free PDF extracts available on the internet which give a sufficient overview.

And if someone is experiencing problems with "stopping pedalling for a few seconds", switch your computer to "10-seconds power". This slightly averaged figure will be still be good enough for orientation, but flatten out the spikes.


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## CapitalCrewBiker

If you have never ridden 100 miles with your power meter it is not going to help you much to "try to use it" during the ride.. 
Your best bet is ride at your best. Look back at the data and use it as a training tool.


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## Srode

Using a power meter for pacing on Century rides is very nice! Staying under 80% of FTP all the time is good advice. An average of 70% would be a good pacing goal unless you have lots of Century rides over repeated weeks. I think I rode 15 100+ mile rides last year, and I was able to push higher as the year season went on, but not to start. Pacing, eating and drinking right makes them pretty predictable really.


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## ziscwg

CapitalCrewBiker said:


> If you have never ridden 100 miles with your power meter it is not going to help you much to "try to use it" during the ride..
> Your best bet is ride at your best. Look back at the data and use it as a training tool.





Srode said:


> Using a power meter for pacing on Century rides is very nice! Staying under 80% of FTP all the time is good advice. An average of 70% would be a good pacing goal unless you have lots of Century rides over repeated weeks. I think I rode 15 100+ mile rides last year, and I was able to push higher as the year season went on, but not to start. Pacing, eating and drinking right makes them pretty predictable really.


I did find it useful during the ride. I helped on the flats to keep my effort in check. The one big climb, I did go near threshold.


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