Originally Posted by
southernfox
...useless for elite sprinters. And you kinda identified it.
Just wanted to make sure that was the only criticism. It's completely accurate, unfortunately.
Originally Posted by
carleton
It's not an issue for elite sprinters, it's fundamentally (like at the whiteboard level) not as good for track as other options. All disciplines of track racing.
The premise (as I understand it) of the Stages power meter is that:
- For most people, both right and left legs do the same amount of work.
- On long rides, averages are OK.
Track is fundamentally different. The training efforts can be measured in
fractions of seconds, not several minutes or event hours during a crit race or road ride.
Even pursuit specialists want to know how and what they do from the instant that the start whistle blows. Given the opportunity, a data analyst (the rider reviewing his/her files) would rather have data as close to real-time as possible.
Yes, every power meter averages data that they send to the head unit. Some more than others. Stages averages data more than others.
This averaging is fine for road riding where smoothing/averaging can be over several seconds. But, most trackies would benefit from more granular data.
For example, a pursuiter would want to know exactly what happens during a standing start at the beginning of 4K just as much as a Team Sprint Man 1 rider. Going out too hard in the first half lap can destroy a 4K effort. Not going hard enough might limit cruising speed.
Mass start efforts have lots of things to be measured. Basically, watching how "matches" are burned to win inter-race or final sprints and what it takes to bridge gaps or take laps.
SRM is the PM against which all others are compared and even they have been resting on their laurels. They haven't significantly iterated on their track PMs in 10 years or more.
There is a "race to the bottom" in the PM world right now where everyone is trying to make the cheapest power meter. This is the wrong approach, IMHO. Basically, you wind up just cutting features.
As evident in bike shops and tracks around the world, trackies (and cyclists in general) have no problem spending money. Offer more features to differentiate yourself in the market...not lower prices. Someone will always go lower than you, but everyone can't offer more features than you.
My ask: We don't need a less expensive power meter. Make the best power meter possible and people and teams will buy it. Make a power meter than caters to track athletes. Don't just make a road PM then say, "Oh, and it'll fit on a track bike, too." We aren't dumb
Your understanding is slightly askew. Our meters broadcast at 4Hz, but head units only receive samples at 1Hz. In that case, you're right, it's because road: you have to have enough memory to hold a LONG road race file. That's where the majority of sales go, so that's the market that is catered to. In short, no, we don't average anything more than anyone else does. Not sure where that came from. Maybe it's the actual mechanics of our measurement getting confused. But here's the rub, until you have a head unit that samples at 4Hz, or greater, you're never going to get that granular data, from any meter. Then additionally you have to write a program that will read all of those data points, and not smooth anything. I dunno if you've ever looked at unsmoothed data, but it's hard to find anything of value in that morass of jumbled lines.
And yes, the left/right balance isn't perfect, however, very, very, very few people are more than 5% out of balance. And for what it's worth, there isn't a body of research that shows 50/50 symmetry is important. More power is important, regardless of how it's made. We have examples of riders that used some of our early L/R cranks and tried to keep a 50/50 balance, and got no better, and even worse in some cases. None of the athletes that made symmetry a priority improved, if that tells you anything. I don't have the citation on me, but Georgia Tech published a paper a while back to he effect that whatever your pedal stroke is naturally is the one that will produce the most power for you.
By the way, we DO make a track specific power meter. They've won at least a handful of Master's Worlds titles. But again, because of the way our meter works, we can't really capture the standing start high-torque, low-RPM stuff, which is a bummer.