Just make sure you hit “Start.” With the Wahoo, it’s surprisingly easy to forget this at a fondo. The reason is, you power up the unit like normal. But then you may ride to the start, or ride around a little. The Wahoo will prompt, “Start Ride?” You say “No” because you want to record your avg power, speed, etc for the actual event and not have it diluted with pre-ride.
But then, you’re at the starting line, waiting, talking to others. Next thing you’re off doing the 100 miles. The Wahoo will never prompt you again to hit “Start.” If you said “No” the first time it asked, it won’t ask again. I’ve done this twice.
Oh and make sure your power meter battery is good. Had that one too
I do have the Bolt that has the color options for power and heart rate, which I also find very helpful. The reason you mention is precisely why I will have average speed on the display.
But maybe IF to help keep you in check if youre afraid of going out too hard, and maybe a reminder to eat and drink.
But really, my advice is too ignore the computer and enjoy the ride. Don’t go out fast because you are racing, but go slow because you are enjoying being there.
As it’s your first century, using highly variable metrics such as HR ,per, speed , power will be hard to evaluate over the entire distance.
If I’m doing a chill 100 I use distance and time only ones reducing, ones increasing that’s it.
At start just glass crank go very easy at 50 miles reevaluate feeling ,last 25 miles if good ride like hell , you’ll pass loads of fast starters who tried to extrapolate metrics over the distance.
Breathing, leg feelings are your metrics
To finish strong imho
Problem with average speed is that it’ll be across your whole ride and can disguise your slowing down over the duration of the event. I don’t have average speed showing on my main screens, but I do have an auto lap trigger every 30 mins that shows distance and average. You can then keep an eye on your recent numbers without becoming one of those stem starers who forgets to look up and enjoy the event and scenery.
On my Lezyne I put power & cadence on the map screen, & on the first data screen I put a whole bunch of metrics that I desperately need to review. But the metrics I’ve found myself giving the most attention to were 3s power, altitude, cadence, distance, time of day, average power (as others said NP is probably more useful), & on an audax revered for its climbing I spent a lot of attention on road gradient in order to feel okay about the level of ouch. On an unfamiliar audax I kept it mostly on the map screen & occasionally flicked back to the first data screen.
Also I put a cheat sheet on my stem: distances from start point to key locations if it’s fairly flat, or altitudes of peaks if it’s more about the hill climbs. Ridewithgps is my friend.
Thank you everyone for the great advice! I’m going to use the metrics mainly to make sure I don’t blow myself up in the early part of the race, so I hopefully won’t be staring too much at my screen. The course looks like a lot of fun and so I will make sure I enjoy the experience.
On my Wahoo Bolt… Map screen with Distance and elapsed Time with heart rate on the LED bar.
I’ll have a second screen that, in addition to the above, shows IF, 5s power, and the clock time.
I use a Garmin Edge 530 but use a map screen just about every second of my long rides. I use the MapDashboard Connect IQ field to display six data fields below the map - speed, 3s power, HR, cadence, distance, and duration. I’ll try to take a screen capture later tonight. Regardless, here is a link from @GPLama that explains it very well.
