You’re all good. And yep, the stuff around is real. Very real. And when the story isn’t pretty because of the stuff around, it results in being shitlisted pretty quickly. Thankfully there’s a lot of vendors in the sea to fish with. And when they make a good product, the data doesn’t lie.
And then you find out the vendors are all using the same distributor and you have to rely on them for warranty claims on accuracy.
As the song by L7 in Quentin Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers suggests, I’ve made their shitlist.
I’m tempted to buy a flash trainer and have it tested for accuracy. Then offer it for a small fee to sniff out the BS locally.
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I’ve sent in my fit files to Stages and they want me to send in my power meter for testing. FYI, I have a 2018 Kickr and a Stages 3.
Part2…
So I did my ramp test today with the new power meter as scheduled. The PM lately has been running 10-15W lower than the VR after calibration.
My pre-ramp test VR FTP was 242 and after today’s ramp test using the PM it now sits at 218.
Has anyone else seen such a drop in FTP when going from VR to PM???
Would you be here asking this question had your PM given you a higher FTP than your VR FTP?
Yes/maybe it sucks to see the number go down, but it is relative since going forward your training will be using your PM as the power source.
Lastly, I would trust the Stages over the virtual power. Be sure to zero offset it w/out your feet in the pedals before each session and you should be good to go.
Yes. I went from a FTP of 485W to 286W switching from VP to powermeter.
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I hear what you’re saying but yes, I would be here if the FTP number had as big an up swing as it did a low one.
Just trying to figure out if the PM is wonky or not. I haven’t had a chance to use it much at consistent levels but I am curious to see how it performs at “low, medium and high” watts over a significant amounts of time. Try to see if average watts and RPE match up after repeated workouts.
Thanks for the response.
AndyGajda, thanks for sharing.
I guess you can have an indoor FTP and an outdoor one.
How did you (or anyone else reading this) go about testing their outdoor power? Best 20mins from a group ride, actual field test, a ramp test or a guess?
I think you’ll be fine. My buddies who use Stages are happy w/their purchases.
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We need to put this as a banner on the top of this website:
VIRTUAL POWER IS NOT A MEASURE (OR EVEN AN ESTIMATE) OF YOUR ACTUAL POWER OUTPUT.
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Yup, bold… double underlined… and flashing… like a 90’s web page.
It’s “virtual” for a reason. I almost wish they had made a unique name for the data from it. “Power” and “Watts” in use imply far more than what we commonly see with these setups.
It leads to the “I lost power when I got a real power meter…” comments. No, you didn’t lose anything. You just changed the tape measure that you were using.
Effectively you moved from a sloppy photo copy of a ruler (with scaling issues), and you got a digital caliper with real precision and accuracy. Virtual power is the sloppy copy, and the power meter is the digital caliper.
Yes, some virtual power setups can correlate well to real power measurement. But based on the many posts like this, I expect it is the exception rather than the rule.
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Yeah, OK. Thanks for that.
I understand that there will be a difference between a PM and VR but what I was trying to figure out is how much of difference is “normal”. I assumed PM’s will different from model to model and from model-unit to model-unit but in the end what I was really after was whether or not big swings are the norm. It seems like they are so I got what I was looking for. Thanks to all who responded.
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The last ramp test I did on a Kurt Kinetic with virtual power gave me an FTP of 324. Then I got a stages crank and retested 2 days in a row. First one came in at 298 and the second was 296. Pretty massive change from the virtual 324. I’m definitely fitter and faster now, 5 months later, than I was then. Though I think my VO2 has suffered with all the sweet spot work.
I ran virtual and stages side by side and the numbers were close when I was doing an endurance workout like Petit but the numbers were way off once I got above threshold. The virtual power was estimating a much higher power output.
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Exactly same with my kinetic road machine (with Virtual power) and my 4iiii. At lower power levels they tracked pretty well upto (if I remember correctly) around sweetspot (about 250w) for me…but as power went higher then VP started to get higher and higher and higher…I used to think I rocked at v02 work…I do not! Lol. Power meter so much better.
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This is the best post ever on the TrainerRoad forum!!
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