My New Cycleops Pro 300PT Indoor Trainer with PowerTap

This is one nice indoor trainer! Especially if you are interested in tracking your power output. Using a power meter is the only way to really track progress accurately in terms of your real ability to generate a certain amount of power. It also drives home the fact that power-to-weight is an incredibly important consideration in cycling. If you can somehow get your weight lower while maintaining your strength, you will be faster! I want to find the sweet spot - my optimal weight. I am sure it's less than my current weight!

The software that comes with the 300PT is about ten years behind the times, however. It does provide a display of all sorts of data from your ride including power and heart rate, but the interface is terrible. Normal things like being able to use the delete key on a selected activity just don't work. You also cannot connect the control head on the 300PT to a computer while you are riding. It would be so nice to be able to see the power data in a real-time graph as I was cycling.

I have started reading Training and Racing with a Power Meter to learn more about power and how to use all of this power information to train. My strength is obviously in sprinting and my weakness is in aerobic endurance...so I know what I need to improve, I just need a plan for how to do it over the winter using the Cycleops. Apparently it's easier to improve your aerobic ability than your brute force short duration power, so there may be some hope for me.

The next purchase will have to be a set of Zipp 404 wheels with a PowerTap hub. That can wait until spring, though. Now it's time to get ready to go for a nice Sunday outdoor ride after all of yesterday's rain. It's 40 degrees out now - here's hoping it warms a bit more by 9:30!