First ride with Powertap

It's a good idea to just ride for a week or two with power and collect the data.

I'd get another program other than Poweragent.....some are free others cost money. I like wko+ and have been using it for 5 years. RaceDay and Golden Cheetah(free) are two others.

Have you read Allen/Coggan's book on training with power? Or even better Skiba's two books on tri training and tri training with power. The power book is built on the first so I always recommend getting both.

I just installed Golden Cheetah. Having trouble with the USB drivers so I just imported the data and it worked fine. It's a lot more intuitive than Poweragent. After a few rides I'll download the trial of WKO+ for evaluation.

The Allen/Coggan book is available on Amazon, but the books by Philip Skiba aren't at Amazon or at my library. Both are available at his website though. 

Enjoy your 'new toy,' but don't over analyze things initially. One thing you'll notice is that your power fluctuates drastically on a ride. Uphill vs. downhill is big. It's far easier to hold more power going uphill than going down.

Eventually you will want to do a FTP test, which is essentially a 20 min test where you can estimate your FTP by taking 95% of the power you get in the test. Some people advocate a 5 min 'blow out' test before the 20 min test - if this isn't done your FTP may be a tiny bid high.

I was in your shoes last October, when I got my PT, so let me know if you have any questions.

Poweragent isn't bad if you ignore their "zones".

For cadence, you probably just aren't displaying it on the Joule.  If you move the highlight over one of the 6 fields, push down on the joystick and hold it.  It'll cycle through different settings for that item.  That way you can customize everything you want to see on the ride.

Thanks. I was able to figure out the menus and get cadence, so I'm going to use it like a regular bike computer for a couple of weeks. I know I need to do the FTP test but I am also in the middle of marathon training. I have marathons October 30 and November 18. I'm going to do Jorge's plan this winter, think I should wait for the FTP test until after marathons are done?

Ride for now and just save the data for later....Jorge's plans always have the necessary testing built in---so a week or two of getting on the trainer and then a test week so no need to worry about FTP now while marathon training.

That is good news. Cycling on my days off from running is really enjoyable. I don't think the cycling on Jorge's plan will count as fun!

Golden Cheetah, is pretty awesome once you get used to it.

offers much more cool stuff then even WKO+ (which i used for 1 yr).  Just ride first week then take your test.

This is a little bit of a pain, but you can select all your rides in the bottom left window (ctrl-a or click-holdshift-click), then do file->export to some format.  I used peaksware (.pwx), as I found that CSV didn't include the ride time and thus caused issues in Golden Cheetah.

Then in Golden Cheetah, import them all.

I say it's a pain because I had to click "yes" on a dialog once for each ride, which was super-annoying.  There's probably a better way.

No, it won't.  But it does work.

BTW, the one thing that you find out quick with a PM is that the 400w you are holding momentarily that seems so easy ain't so easy 30 seconds later.  I do that all the time.