So you may have noticed just about every rider in the pro peloton uses a power meter. in the Lemond era, thirty plus years ago there may have been one or two pros racing with them and a few more pros using just in training. The Armstrong era saw many more using them for training and a couple more in racing, but over the last decade, there are few pro bikes that don’t have a power meter mounted. Clearly we can see the benefit of using such a device to help control and monitor training by keeping us in various zones and tracking are progress, but what are the benefits in racing?
Power Meters For Training
As with training with a power meter, there is also an immediate benefit and a future benefit for racing with one. In training, this may be seen when we are on the road, holding 400w for one minute efforts as prescribed by our coach or not going too hard on a zone 2 ride. The future benefit of a power meter for our training is used by your coach (whether self coached or otherwise) to track and review your training, checking progress, monitoring fatigue and seeing how you are improving. So how does this pan out in racing?
Power Meters In Races
I’m sure you’ve seen many pro riders watching their SRM or Garmin while in a breakaway or Froome checking his power meter on the climbs. What are they doing you ask? Well they are carefully controlling their efforts to maximise their performance in the race. Going too hard too early may jeopardize your performance later on in a race. Keeping an even pace on a climb may also result in the best possible effort for that climb.
A power meter is not only useful for guiding training and evaluating races, it can also be used to guide your efforts during races. I’m sure you can all see the benefit during a TT, but a road race? Here is a not too recent, but great article discussing how you can improve your performance using power pacing strategies in all events…Pacing with Power in Competition
