Lester Is Everywhere!

Despite all the talk, despite all the rumors, despite what you may have already heard, I am now the proud owner of a Powertap power meter.



As I usually say, how utterly exciting.

And now that I’m gauging my rides via watts rather than heart rate, the first thing I learned extremely quickly is just how inconsistent my (and yours, probably) pedal strokes actually are. What may seem like a steady effort is most likely far from an actual steady effort. What exactly do I mean by that?

My first time out, riding down 70th Street, which is flat, toward Central Park, this is what my wattage was looking like, all in the space of less than five or six seconds:

168
192
201
141
151
158
198
212
166
179

So on and so forth.

At first, I figured, “Something’s wrong with this thing,” although upon speaking with Saris, the customer service rep quickly informed me that nothing was wrong.

“That’s just the way people ride,” she politely informed me.

“It’s hard to imagine my output is going up and down by 40 watts on a flat road,” I said.

“Try decreasing the sampling,” she suggested, which basically means I had to decrease the frequency with which the CPU provides readings. So I moved it up from 1 to 10. Now my readings, on a flat road while trying to hold it steady, look more like this:

168
177
162
178
180
175
166
170

That’s the kind of variance I can live with as, after having ridden with this thing for a week now, I’ve learned that a 10 or 20 watt difference in perceived effort is extremely negligible and I say all that to say, this thing is INCREDIBLY ACCURATE.

You know how every person you meet who has a power meter never fails to say, “It’s SO much more accurate than heart rate?” Well, we all say that because it’s so goddam true, so I’m here to tell you, “Power meters are SO much more accurate than heart rate monitors.”

Yet all that accuracy comes at a price. Granted, the Powertap was a gift and it came with the complete gift, but this bad-boy, the Comp wired model, cost almost $700, which, in this economy, is a pretty hefty price tag.

Apart from all that boring bullshit, take a look at some of these pics from last Saturday’s race in Central Park. Is it me or does Lester somehow manage to get into every goddam picture from every goddam race? Is his wife the woman behind the camera? I mean, this guy is all over the Internet!







Finally, is this guy spitting or is that a snotshot?