Riding to Power - What to put on your Screen?

With Coach Cheyne Murphy

​First of all, I’ll start off by saying that there are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to what data you have showing on your bike computer screen, but if you are new to riding with power, or are looking to start riding with power, please read on for some learnings that I have had over the years of being in the sport from both riding with and without power at different stages. 

Do I need to ride with power? Is it worth the expense? As per most, I asked these questions of myself about five years ago, and in my experiences since, the answer is yes. 

What are the benefits?  It’s my opinion that power is a number that can’t be cheated, no matter if you are riding into a block head wind, with a humming tail wind, rain, heat, cold, uphill, downhill; it doesn’t change anything……

200W IS STILL 200W in all these circumstances.  

On the other hand, if you are riding to speed and/or heart rate, they are massively affected by all the elements, terrain and conditions listed above. If you’re going into a race with a pre perceived plan of “I’m going to ride 36k/hr tomorrow” and you come up against a 30k head wind, you are going to be looking down at your screen wondering what is wrong with you, push harder into the wind to get your speed up and burn match after match which is going to come back to haunt you on that run.  You also need to remember that the conditions are the same for everyone racing when you are faced with these challenging situations, and those that race smart and stick to their plan will be the ones smiling at the end of the day.  The time will be what it will be, and if you walk away from the race knowing that you nailed your plan, you will be happy.
Personally, I no longer have “current speed” on my bike computer, and I haven’t missed it.  If anything, it has kept my head clearer in challenging conditions in both training and racing by just focusing on my power and cadence. 
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So, you’ve got the power metre, and now you are messing around with the screens on your bike computer trying to work out what you should be looking at and why.  As mentioned above, there’s a heap of different options that you can be looking at, but I like to keep things as simple as possible. You can go through trial and error for what works for you but from my own experience, below is what I have on my screen and why.

 
3s POWER

• Rather than using straight power, which jumps all over the place whilst it tries to keep up with what is going on at your cranks or pedals, “3 Seconds Power” allows a bit of consistency to show through as it only updates every three seconds. This helps, because the main focus in training and racing is to keep as consistent as possible to the numbers your coach has noted.  Something else to be thinking about when riding to power is what your “perceived effort” feels like at different power levels. The reason being is that I can almost guarantee that at some point in the future you are going to lose your power number in a race situation and have to go to plan B. If you have been thinking about your perceived effort  during training, it won’t be so daunting. This extends to the run as well, electronics are a wonderful thing when they are working, but you can’t solely rely on them, really think about how you feel during sessions.

CADENCE

• No brainer that cadence is our next most important number to be looking at.  Your coach will more than likely be prescribing what cadence he or she wants the session done at, and there is reasons behind that so you should focus on nailing that as much as your power.  This can be for building strength (low cadence) or recovery components (high cadence)  Your cadence is also a great number to really get in tune with during training as it points out where the sweet spot is for you in regards to your gearing.  Sometimes you will go one gear easier and your power goes up considerably, creating a situation where you are using less perceived effort for a better result.

LAP NP (Normalised Power for the Lap)

• First of all, what is Normalised Power, and how is it different to normal power? Normalised power takes into account the variation in workouts, ie efforts, hilly terrain etc.  eg If you are riding around a flat crit track, riding a consistent power number, you will find that your power and normalised power will be very similar. However, in a hilly ride, or a ride where you are fluctuating your efforts quite a bit, you could potentially see variance in these numbers in the vicinity of 20 – 30%.  Normalised power will also give you a more accurate read of the actual physiological impact the ride is having on your body… how many matches are we burning at this effort level?  So for mine, this is the number we focus on so we can get off and run on race day. 

 

• The reason for using “LAP” NP on the screen is that when prescribing workouts for athletes, it may be something like 5 * 10min at 75% of FTP with an RPM of 85.  With a 2-minute spin between - as an example.  Or in a race situation, a coach tells you to ride 230W for the first lap, 240W for the second and 250W for the third.  By using this selection, it is as simple as hitting the lap button on your bike computer to reset the lap data so you can focus in on this number for the proceeding laps.  Also, by hitting the lap button at the end of each effort or rest in training, or after each lap in a race, it also captures it as a piece of data that can be reviewed by you and your coach.

 
LAP TIME.

• Do you find yourself having to become a mathematical genius when a training session has a lot of variance in efforts and rest, having to remember what time you started that effort on etc.  By having “Lap Time” on your screen, each time you hit that lap button at the end of each effort or rest, as per above it resets so you can know exactly how long you have been going / left to go of an effort or rest. 

 
LAP CADENCE

• Along the same lines, this will reset each time you hit the lap button, which is useful in both training sessions and on race day, keeping check that you are on the money against the planned cadence.  It’s a real good check on race day, if the number is under the plan, fair chance that you are pushing too big of a gear, therefore burning those much needed matches again.  This number will clearly call it out.  

 
AVG SPEED

• Although I said that I don’t have current speed on my computer, I do like to see what the average speed is for training sessions, and on race day.  This number keeps you a bit honest when completing training sessions, and on race day  but it doesn’t mess with your head like current speed does, as it takes time to vary unlike looking at your computer going up a hill at 14k/hr and feeling like you have to push harder because you are going to slow.  If you are hitting your power plan, speed will be what it will be.

 
DISTANCE

• Bit of a no brainer, but we need this on screen if we are measuring efforts by distance, and or riding an overall distance rather than time in training.  The other benefit is having those key mental moments as you tick through the ks during a race bike leg.     

 
TIMER

• This is the overall time for the session.  Much like the distance this is covering off the total duration, so you know where you are at in your training day, and keeping an overall view on your race time.

 
As I said in the very beginning, there is a plethora of options in your device to display on the screen, and you can obviously set up multiple screens if you want to see extra data like heart rate if that is key with your coach.  For me, I’m not looking for much more outside of my screen above to be honest, and that’s in training and racing. 
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Should you have questions, I’m more than happy to chat further, feel free to reach out in the comments or send me a PM through messenger.