Hi there!
I noticed something to me quite interesting today. In the past, I rode all my workouts on the same bike with a stages L power meter. I sold the bike and put my other bike on the trainer. It has a quarq PM (Spider based/SRAM Red) so it is nice in a way as the one sided paddling drills show the right power numbers.
Anyways, what I noticed was, that the quarq PM takes way longer to react and also reacts very different compared to the stages. When I gut to the first interval, it took forever to get to target power (I could have paddled with a 120 cadence but that makes no sense) and it was always a bit lower than target. On the steps down it was ok though. Any settings I can change?
The first step for these ladders is supposed to be at 238 Watts.
Here a screen shot:
What’s your actual trainer and power meter setup? Your graphs look very rough to me if you have a smart trainer in erg mode - it sounds like you do based on your text, but can you detail out how the trainer is being controlled and what software you are using to powermatch (assuming you are using power match)?
Yeah, in power match TR the app needs to figure out how hard to set the trainer to get the reading you want on the power meter. Eg, the workout might call for 250w, but if the 250w on the trainer is 300w on the power meter, then it needs to set the trainer much lower.
From your workout graph, it looks like the reverse… Called trainer for 240w but quarq reports it’s only 230w. After a short time TR figures out it’s low and tells the trainer to put up more resistance.
It has to learn by setting resistances on the trainer while you’re riding and seeing what the power meter says is actually happening. Different points in the power profiles will vary, so it takes a lot of different inputs before it has a good model.
All this assumes you’re using power match. I don’t use power match, so I may be talking out my rear end!
Kickr snap, power from Quarq.
I was told by the TR tech team that it always looks so rough if the power source is a PM not a Trainer. Even in ERG mode.
