Ok so my Stages is fitted, calibrated and working as far as I can tell.
Having tried it out on today's commute (not the best place I know) I feel like I need advice on how to train effectively with power! What garmin power fields do you prefer to display? Say I have an FTP of X watts, am I supposed to just try and keep it around X regardless of wind and gradient?
Today, in heavy London traffic, it just jumped around and didn't seem to correlate at all with what my legs were doing. Compared to cadence it seems really hard to keep it consistent! I was looking at 3s average.
Cheers!
Ahh, glad you got it man.
Honestly the best thing to do is use it on your rides for a while and consistently upload your data to strava as normal. Just use it and ride as you did and gather some data before worrying about training with power. Until you do this and have a good basis of your zones and getting used to reading as you ride, it won't be beneficial.
The 3s average is the display you want to use. That is what I use. On my main screen I have power 3s, cadence, HR, distance covered.
I have an FTP specific profile also, on that screen I have power 3s, cadence, HR, Lap avg power and a normal lap timer. I use this for FTP tests and interval sessions.
Once you get used to riding with power, and you have your power zones sorted on Strava (or get Golden Cheetah I recommend) you will soon make more sense of it all in your head and you will be able to correlate that to performance wise on the bike. The random watt figure jumping up and down like a yo-yo you see now is very very common when people start using power, don't worry about it.
Once you establish all this, you will be able to do for example, say 250w for 5mins, then 3mins at 300w etc. You will get to the point where your body and brain knows what those effort levels feel like to you, but not until you have all the initial data in place and get used to using it.
Sorry for the essay, hope it helps and feel free to ask away. Exactly why I created this thread