I’m looking at some of my outdoor intervals…, 3 min at 320 watts.
Overall, I do a pretty good job, but my power jumps around at least 50 watts up and down during the intervals. I’m thinking I would definitely have to turn target alerts off. They would drive me nuts.
Agreed, turned off alerts after the first time using them over three years ago (Edge 520).
There are some easy to read gauges on ConnectIQ, but I’m still using the 10 sec and lap power fields on my lap page to follow a workout.
Outside I use a stages head unit and I push workouts to it using Today’s Plan. There aren’t any alerts, just a display of the power range I need to hold along with total interval time and time remaining.
I like not having a beep or alert, I just periodically glance down to see my watts to make sure I’m where I need to be.
Nate,
How do you handle it now for indoor workouts? There is the changing color for target watts. I try and stay in the green but curious how you determine when it changes color for each user. Is it a fixed number of watts or a percentage?
I tend to agree that a slightly wider margin may be better for outdoors as well. As a user I will do my best to keep it as close to target as possible anyway and I also accept that choosing to do these workouts outside means a bit more difficulty doing that. If a slightly wider margin keeps annoying alerts away then people may actually leave the alerts turned on.
I agree. All you need is to be prompted with the target power and duration before the start of the interval with maybe a count down feature to the start of the interval. During the interval, you need:
3s Average Power,
Interval Average Power, and
Time remaining
with the average power displayed for a few seconds at completion.
Your ranges are too narrow. What about just going by zones?
It’s a fixed a wattage.
Same issue, zones are small for low FTP riders.
How would this work for a workout that gives you a range? Eg. I did Donner the other day and it says “3x12 minutes between 286-298 watts” - does the +6 apply to the high end and -6 to the low end? or will all workouts just give you 1 number to shoot for in the future?
If we are shooting for 100% FTP the text based workout would be a range and the Garmin based workout would be ftp +- 6 watts. They might not be exactly the same.
Cool, thanks!
I was doing outside training using a training from TrainingPeaks. Those alerts are really annoying. Popping too often. Need to figure out how to disable that feature (forerunner 935 in use).
Do you get a notification of the target power and duration before the start of the interval ? Or do you not know what you are doing until the interval starts?
I can’t remember how it worked on the 800.
On 820 it tells you the interval information for a few seconds at the start before jumping back to the interval screen with power (appears to be instant or near instant) and the useless arrow thing.
but learning to hold power outside is all part of riding a bike! Learn the machine…no?
are riders using this feature? I think it would drive most people insane!
You get a notification when the interval starts.
That’s the theory. My only point of reference is running pace, but “the machine” (the Garmin watch) is more of a hindrance than a help with its pace warnings. You can learn to hold a pace, both for short and long intervals, without the warnings. I assume the same applies to maintaining power on a bike.
Option 2 but also think the range could be wider. Could grade/ altitude gain be used to widen the range when climbing and then narrow it when on flat?
