Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
What is the purpose of PMax? Initially I thought it was an actual measurement until it changed on me a few times. It seems like the most ridiculous and pointless metric available.
My current PMax is, once again, less than my actual 1 sec max. It's actually less than my 2 sec max! Silliness.
I'm not an expert on this, and I've never used WKO because GC is free, but the
Golden Cheetah modeling tutorials do a pretty good job of explaining how the parameter values are estimated based on the power data if you're really interested. My understanding is that in the 3 parameter model, Pmax is used to calibrate the trade off between CP and W'. So while PMax isn't that interesting of a metric, CP and W' are, and based on my limited experience, the 3 parameter model seems to do a much better job of estimating a realistic power curve than the 2 parameter model. The thing I like about GC is that if I see a number that doesn't seem right, I can do a performance test of the missing duration and update the model with that performance data point. So in your case, if the PMax looks low, you could add some 1 & 2 second maximal efforts to the model to see what impact that has on estimated CP and W'. I agree that none of it really matters, but I've had some fun fiddling around with it.