Watt up?

Never did understand the whole watt meter thing in cycling. Silly things cost like a kajillion dollars. Most of the earliest ones were in a rear hub, so now you need a full-custom rear wheel. Why not just monitor heart rate and distance? Watt up?

Now, I get it.

This year, as part of a commitment to not porking up over the Winter, I'm trying a new fitness routine to ensure I get some regular, productive exercise. Part of that program is using local cycling studio Power Cycling and coach Marc Mueller. In addition to keeping me engaged enough to actually work out regularly, my theory is that this sort of sport-specific training will benefit me come Spring.

My first visit was a fitting, followed by a performance assessment. The goal was to get me comfortable on the CycleOps trainers, and to begin to explore my level of fitness and what would be required to reach my anaerobic threshold.

During this first visit, the mystery of watt up began to be revealed. When you ride out on the road with a cycling computer with a heart monitor, you gain a little insight. You can watch heart rate as it's impacted by time, distance, speed, hills, wind, etc. And you can see your current and average speeds. But what you can't see is how much power you're putting out under any of these conditions.

With the watt meter, now I could get a full 360 degree view of what was going on. I could see my heart rate over time, at a given pedaling cadence and power output level. Friggin' cool! I could see how quickly I recovered, how well I was holding a wattage output. I now realize that the data I had out on the road was interesting, but not nearly as useful as it would be with the added dimensionality of wattage.

Last night I did my first real training ride. Marc creates training "levels" of intensity using wattage outputs based on your baseline tests, but then he tweaks from there. My half hour training ride felt good, but not as though I had pushed myself too hard. Sure enough, my results showed it. Mid-range average heart rate. Decent but not exceptional wattage. Bottom line? I'm getting a harder training ride assignment next week!

Some pretty cool information here. I don't know that I'll be rushing out to drop $1,400 on the Garmin Vector power meter pedals. But they do suddenly look interesting...