My iBike power meter died last week when the wired speed sensor started to fail and the completely crapped out. It needed recalibrating again too after some wet rides, and the data has been unreliable at best and crazy at worst for the last couple of weeks. I’ve kind of had enough of recalibrating and second guessing it, worrying about it warming up in the sun and skewing the wind speed sensor, or wondering what the hell its doing after a big descent. It’s a great introduction to biking with power, but after almost 2 years I want a more reliable, more accurate power meter. Time to upgrade but I’m skint. It will cost me more than £100 to buy a new wireless mount (they don’t do the cheaper wired mount any more) and get it shipped from the USA to me in Wales.
So I took the iBike off, retired it to its box (I wonder if anyone will want it on eBay without a working speed sensor) and put the bracket for my ever reliable Garmin 305 back on the bars.
Hill reps this morning started off quite nice not having to calibrate, worry about, and recalibrate the iBike. These are habits I have got into with each ride, so not doing it was a bit weird. I didn’t mind losing the wind and slope data. It was annoying not having the power data.
On the 3 minute work reps up the east side of Cefn Bryn it wasn’t so great. Heart rate is way too slow to be a useful metric other than as a maximum HR target for the top of the hill, so the effort is all based on perceived exertion. As I’ve been training with a power meter on these intervals for months my perceived exertion in this case is probably pretty good, but not being able to see my power output in the early part of the climb felt like I was probably taking it a little easy there as I got tired.
The effort put into the work rep is kind of rewarded (or punished) by seeing the power output for the 3 minute climb. Without seeing my power output I didn’t get the feelings of, “wooo! 400W over the top – I crushed it!” or “aaargh! I can’t squeeze 300W out of my legs – they’re trashed!”
I’ve still got a lot of training to do this season, but I may have to leave training with power again until the winter. The most annoying thing is that my TSS for a ride is lower if based on heart rate instead of on power, so my TSB (training stress balance) is dipping erroneously. It’s mucking up my graphs!