Karl from Silicon Valley Cycling Center continues our series of intros to power meters by giving his next brief introduction, the CycleOps PowerTap SL 2.4.

The PowerTap measures torque and rotational velocity much like the SRM Powermeter, only it does it wirelessly from the rear hub. Because it’s wireless it presents a very clean and easy installation. The hub unit also determines your cadence by looking at the fluctuation in power levels and calculates the cadence. A speed/cadence sensor is available from Saris for the chain stay that will measure it more accurately via a magnet on the crank. Pricing for the wireless unit is about $1500 MSRP. Saris does offer a wired version that retails for $900.

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By Russ Bartholet

For the past month that I have been “riding with power” my CycleOps PowerTap 2.4 SL is has been a great tool. After the first few weeks of getting familiar with the functions of the PowerTap system and learning what it takes to produce and sustain the different levels of power it was time to setup my training plan and establish a few goals.

Setting up a training plan
My current goals are to gain more fitness and not get dropped on the local Wednesday night group rides. Weight loss is always a motivating factor as well and usually means that I can climb better when the road goes up. I figure that I will loose the weight as I follow the plan to improve my fitness. In the past I have been able to ride for a few weeks consistently until I get burned out and end up taking a day or two off the bike that turns into a week or more. So nothing has been too regular or consistent. The training plan that I have been following has rest days and recovery days. I have been able to better monitor these recovery days with the PowerTap power meter. I can now see that my recovery days in the past were not at the recovery pace and it is understandable why I would burn out after a few weeks.

Regardless of what my goals are I needed to determine my Functional Threshold Power (FTP) and set up my power zones. This is no different from the zones that riders will set when training with a heart rate monitor. The rider’s FTP is the power output that the rider could sustain over the course of an hour. Both the FTP and the power zones are critical in setting up and following a training plan.

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Karl and Alex from Silicon Valley Cycling Center give a brief introduction to the three most popular power meters on the market. In Part 1, Karl goes over the pro peleton favorite SRM PowerMeter.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Karl will be going over the features and benefits of the CycleOps PowerTap 2.4SL!