How do you display outdoor power on your head unit?

Equipment
22

Pretty sure I have 3 second power (maybe 5). I don’t really want anything longer than 5ish seconds when trying to see ‘what power am I doing now’. It does jump around a lot unless you are really keeping a steady effort.
For pacing longer efforts/climbs, I like to have:

  • 3 second power
  • 30 second power
  • lap power
    This helps me see both the overall picture of where I am, but also the very recent past and my current power. I generally try to keep my 3/30 second power ‘on target’, while the lap average is more informational - I don’t adjust my effort based on that.
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23

^^ I do this as well. 30s also helps smooth out power across rolling terrain and 3/5s gives me my current “direction”

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24

My Garmin is setup to display an unfiltered power value. To properly pace I want immidiate feedback if I overshoot my power target. If I had 3s average it would result in delayed feedback and a longer time until I would correct my output.

Power output is a bit jerky but that is just the way it is; filtering doesn’t change that, it just hides it. With practice it can be a lot less so, but immidiate feedback is key.

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25

I use to use 3sec on my infrocrank’s (dual sided) - When I moved to L-only I felt the power fluctuated a little more so I moved it to 5sec. I much prefer 5 sec power (or longer) - it’s better to use RPE and check the power meter to make sure you’re on target rather than always trying to chase the perfect number

26

Wahoo has the colour coded side leds for that

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27

Is that a standard screen option or an IQ Connect field?

Been awhile since I have used my 530…

28

That one and the other two I use are standard fields provided by Garmin.

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29

My main riding screen (not a workout) is

  • Speed
  • Distance
  • Time
  • 3s power
  • HR
  • Cadence

For Intervals it’s

  • Lap time
  • target power (if it has a structured workout file behind it)
  • 3s power
  • HR
  • Cadence
    -Last Lap Power

I’m not sure I would use just the current Zone since the zones can be quite large and for a given intended effort the top and bottom of a zone can be pretty different. For example, my Z2 is something like 170-235W. Riding at 175 and at 225 would both show the same on my computer but are two pretty different efforts.

Also, current lap power can be a bit of a trap. If I’m trying to do a 10min threshold interval at say 300W and after 6min my avg power is 295 and I then ride at 310 for the last 4 min to bring it up I just did a slightly different workout than I intended. I think it would be better to just try to keep it pinned at 300 the whole time and let the average be what it is.

30

I’m having a productive spring, and my FTP has risen by about 15% since the first of the year. I found that I was psyching myself out looking at power targets in watts because my old zones were stuck in my head. In other words, when it said “hold X watts for 10 minutes”, my first reaction was to think “I can’t hold VO2Max for that long!” instead of recognizing that X is my current FTP and I can, in fact, hold it for 10 minutes.
So I changed my power displays to percent of FTP, and now when I look down and see I’m putting out 102% of FTP, I don’t panic and think I’m going to blow up from doing VO2Max.

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