Power Meter Reflection - How has it changed my training/racing so far?

So it has been over three months since I started training power, and there are a few things that I'd like to mention, especially to those people who haven't trained with power yet. I think everyone responds to the tool a little differently--some people will understand it right away, some people will have to play around with it for a while, and some people will just hire a coach.

I'd like to figure things out myself with the power meter because that's just the way I am, although it might have a lot to do with my exercise physiology-based curriculum for my Kinesiology degree. I really do enjoy learning about power-based training myself, and I'd feel spoiled if all the information were handled by someone else--for now at least.

When I crashed in March (just over 3 weeks after getting the power meter) I took a full week off and it took about four weeks before I actually started riding at an endurance or tempo pace again. This definitely threw my consistency off, especially since I didn't have the motivation to update my training plan. I also returned to my habit of skipping workouts or replacing them without thinking twice. While I was able to train with high volume, this also meant the quality of my workouts were quite low. And the way I knew that was with my power data, which told me the amount of stress I was responding to as a result of these workouts.

Being able to visually track stress allows me to view important things I wouldn't be able to tell with heart rate or RPE. I only started using a performance manager chart 3 days ago (despite having the power meter for 3 months--since I only recently returned to full training).

Right away I was able to see these things:

- The effect (on training stress) of skipping a workout

- The effect of a recovery ride on training stress (...they do have a purpose!)

- The effect on training stress & form as a result of an extended recovery period

- The effect on form as a result of missing workouts due to a crash

- The effect on race freshness as a result of a taper period

- The effect on training stress & form as a result of doing a longer than usual ride (75-mile hilly ride out of the blue)

But what really provoked me to write this reflection was when I analyzed today's data. Actually, I didn't really need to do much analyzing since the data was shown right away to my face. For today's workout, I had to ride 35 minutes at Tempo, but from the data it only showed that I had rode 20 minutes in Tempo! 

However, my RPE definitely felt Tempo-ish, and my heart rate was at tempo too. It turned out that I spent 28 minutes in HR tempo zone.

But that still means that I didn't complete the workout! Which means that I wasted a little of my time, which will ultimately affect how my fitness progresses. Seeing this data allows me to fix the mistakes that I assumed were the problems during my workout, such as riding in a route with stop lights and some long negative grades.

The bottom line is, training with a power meter will tell you if you are training right/wrong, or hard/not hard enough! It takes a lot of guessing out, which is mostly represented by heart rate or RPE for most non-power users.

It does not automatically make improvements though. To get the most of it, I'd definitely agree that you'd need to work with a coach because there's a ton of stuff to learn and most people with full-time jobs don't have the time to learn it themselves.

So that's all for this reflection. People have asked me how different my training has been since I started training with power, and this is pretty much what I have noticed so far, and I know that there's still a whole lot to discover still!

- Dom