Curious and interesting. I never considered using 5 or 10 sec averaging for the reasons I gave. Maybe, I am able in my head to look at the 3 second power over time and think, that is OK, or I do need to back off a bit. Of course I do not react to every rise and fall, but I am looking for a trend. I am happy to see rises and falls, as they tll me something pretty immediately.
@martinheadon The catch with showing those graphs is that is with hindsight. I can see what you are saying as a subsequent analysis, but in reality, you are looking at figures as you cycle, and not looking at a graph as it passes by.
In simple time series analysis terms, all we are discussing is “What is a useful time to average the series over, that provide useful feedback, yet takes away the noise, so you can make sensible decisions?”
I certainly don’t keep “over correcting” with 3 second power. I am applying and managing my power on a longer cycle, but monitoring it on a much shorter cycle. I would not want my information cycle to be as long as my decision cycle. Hence 3 second for information and longer for decisions. @bbarrera I am curious about the ‘over reaction’ piece. Personally I don’t find I do that. For me it is about, “Oh is that what I am doing… I might ease back a bit… or risk a bit more…”
Sure 3s averaging is a bit more peaky, than 5 or 10 second averaging, but not as much as one second. When I hit a hill I see my power rise almost immediately. With a 10 second average, I would expect quite some delay. (I imagine counting to 5 and only then seeing the effect of my power doubling, from 200 to 400W, by it rising by only 50% to 300W). I would want quicker feedback than that, before I start overdoing it and blowing up. And to know I had just done 400W for 5 seconds…
I guess it is what you are used to. I don’t want “the trend”. (But I can see why that might be useful on a turbo). I want to know what I am realistically doing, so I can manage it.)
Interesting. Definitely not convinced to move to a longer average display.
I still back the Variability index as a measure of how much you varied in a session (afterwards). I am happy to manage my power, training outside and inside, using 3 seconds averaging.
It occurs to me that I started with a power meter, by spending a month, using 1s and 3s average power, just seeing what I was doing. Then I settled on 3s power. So perhaps I learnt, over that time to read what i was doing and how the power meter was reacting , and learnt to judge things from there.