Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
After a couple weeks of riding around with your new power meter and getting a feel for what the numbers mean and what 200 and 300 and ... watts feels like
I think that's pretty important. I use power to calibrate RPE, and RPE to modulate power.
You'll want to start looking at the "power curve" in Garmin Connect.
Yes. That's often quite helpful. I've been saying that some uses of power data are more dependent on accuracy (as opposed to merely "consistency") than others. Drag estimation is one of them. Estimating the "power curve" is another, because we're often interested not just in the average level of that curve but also the first derivative of that curve and its integral. (But, as I try to remember to point out, not everyone is interested in those things or what to do with them, so not everyone has the same data fidelity needs).