The Future of Power
Monday, July 2, 2012 at 10:22AM If you read the tea leaves, there is an exciting advancement coming in power meters and shifting. Sooner rather than later, you will be able to set your power meter to a preferred range of wattage and cadence, and your shifting will automatically adjust your gearing to the correct choice.
The technology is already in place to do it. Just like heart rate ranges, you can tell a power meter a narrow range to target. Electronic shifting is now functioning flawlessly in the marketplace, so the two systems just need to talk to each other. The communication is easily done with ANT+ or low power Bluetooth. Problem solved. Tell your bike you want to ride the race between 200 and 210 watts, and it's done.
What about shifting ahead of time because a hill is coming up? The system can't possibly know that, right? Wrong. It's using GPS, so it knows where you are, where you are headed and how fast, so it can easily tell that you've got a big hill coming up and shift moments before, just like you wanted.
If it's all too much, there will be an override button and also a loud beep before it shifts, so you know it's coming.
Why would you want all this? In triathlon, it's all about keeping your wattage even so you can nail the run. Is it an unfair advantage? Maybe, but you still have to put in the training to get your fitness up to the point where you can sustain winning watts in the first place.
Reader Comments (2)
That is awesome. Pretty exciting where bike technology is heading.
Great idea and a clever use of technology. But as you say maybe an unfair advantage for people without spare cash.
Like in formula one racing, let the companies develop this technology then ban it in racing leaving some skill necessary in controling pace.