Power meter with bike

First post since years and also first post in english. Surely our move to germany changed a lot of things.

As you may have followed, I crashed during a hard and fun ski week-end mid January (some shots can be found here). Diagnosis was long and difficult to make: no broken bone, rather a partially sectioned ligament on the upper part of the thumb.

Direct consequence, no biking outside during 2 months, time to rebuild my thumb!

Transforming the downturn into an opportunity, I use this time to improve my Zwift skills.

I was following the Stages brand for some time, as they expected to make a Shimano GRX Powermeter, matching exactly my cranks. And it finally got released during my « sport restricted » time. I most probably got one of the first models in Germany! As soon as I received the order, I replaced my left crank with the new one with the powermeter.

It is a left only, as I have not yet found an option covering both sides left and right for Shimano GRX.

Connection to Garmin Fenix was immediate. Important to notice: the Garmin Fenix only sees one sensor, but the sensor provides both cadence and power.

Initialization of power meter was easy (hold the cranks vertically and launch the setup on the watch). And power and cadence data are available on your Garmin.

I must admit a severe surprise after first usage: values seem very low, at least compared to the values observed on Zwift (value calculated based on my weight, my speed and cadence) where I use an Elite Digital Smart b+ home trainer.

I therefore decided to compare the 2 values and did a flat 51km Zwift training, recording both values. Actually the Elite Home Trainer Value was recorded on Zwift directly and the Stages value was recorded on the Garmin watch.

I also recorded HR and Cadence on both Zwift and Garmin: goal was to have other sensors measuring the same values (HR and Cadence) but on 2 different platforms. Those values would serve as checking/reference point to ensure syncronisation (or not) before looking at the 2 values of Powermeters.

Comparison was done using the Anaysis tool from DC Rainmaker, that I strongly recommend.

Let’s start with the good news: HR and cadence are fine. Both are slightly delayed but with a regular delay.

HR, so using one sensor (my Wahoo Tickr X belt), recorded on Zwift (connected to the belt in Bluetooth to my iPad) and Garmin (connected to my watch in ANT+) are providing the same results:

For cadence, the connection pattern is the same as HR: the Stages power meter provides cadence in Bluetooth to the iPad and is recorded on Zwift. In addition, the sensor is connected in ANT+ to my watch that is recorded on Garmin. Apart some some drops, the value are the same.

So the setup works and the syncronisation is running.

Let’s have a look at the power measures:

Here the values are syncronized (in the timing) but the values are, let’s say, very different, with an average difference of 38%, and Zwift overestimating the Stages values!

I will continue to investigate further more to understand where that comes from.

Bilan intermédiaire

Voici une année 2014, qui se présente meilleure que 2013! Et les résultats de 2012 ne sont pas loin (quoique sur la partie Dev+…).

Bilan entre le 1er janvier et le 15 avril de chaque année.

La préparation de la saison doit donc continuer.

	2012	2013	2014
Compteur d’activités	34	17	26
Distance	609.67 km	283.32 km	539.41 km
Temps h:m:s	71:56:08	37:19:54	53:01:30
Gain d’altitude	30,097 m	9,188 m	17,791 m
Vitesse moy.	8.5 km/h	7.6 km/h	10.2 km/h
FC moy.	125 bpm	127 bpm	130 bpm
Cadence de course moy.	83 ppm	79 ppm	79 ppm
Cadence de vélo moy.	51 tr/min	61 tr/min	70 tr/min
Calories	31,997 C	16,978 C	19,990 C

Remonter un programme d’entrainement Garmin dans Google Calendar ou Outlook

Et voilà, trouvé sur le net:
Here is what I did. I went to my calendar in GC (http://connect.garmin.com/calendar) and clicked on the button link in the top right corner and selected Publish Calendar. In the dialog box that popped up, I right-clicked on the highlighted URL and clicked Copy to copy it. I then opened a new tab and pasted the URL in the address bar. When I hit return, I was prompted to Open or Save the file. I saved it to my desktop; any location you’re going to remember is good.

With the file saved, I opened my Google Calendar, clicked the down arrow next to My Calendars (left side of page, half way down), and clicked Settings. On the Settings page, there is a link entitled Import Calendar. I clicked that and in the dialog box that popped up I hit the Choose File button and navigated to the saved .ics file, and selected the destination calendar (if you have more than one). Once I hit the import button, I had the entries in Google Calendar after a few seconds.

Just about every calendar I’ve seen has an import function. You may need to fish around to find it. I just tried it in Outlook 2010 (File | Open | Import) and it worked flawlessly.

Préparation

Sortie longue avec Frédéric. L’objecctif était d’avancer dans la préparation de la saison, en prévision notamment de la Freetrail et de la transvésubienne. C’était un parcours test. Le coeur est pas trop mal, avec un temps limité au-dessus de 160 et les jambes tournent bien. Il faut encore travailler la puissance, mais le retard d’entrainement sur la saison précédente se comble.

Préparation saison 2012