Garmin Edge + Calories

[amaferanga]

So why did you buy one?

There a plenty of hills near Sheffield to do the costless 'freewheel test'.

There must be a hill near Sheffield that can serve as a hill climb time trial course to regularly gauge you progress.

Is this a serious question?

If you think that time trialling up a hill once a month is as good as a power meter then there's probably nothing I could say to convince you otherwise.

In short, a power meter gives you an objective measure of your training. You can't fool yourself into thinking you're working hard like you can with an HR monitor or using a subjective measure like RPE. One of the greatest advantages of a power meter though is the fact that it gives you an objective means of quantifying training load.

Now what I'm not saying is that anyone NEEDS a power meter to train effectively. Just like you don't NEED a £2000 bike to ride fast. A power meter is just a tool that if used properly allows you to train more effectively. If not used properly its just an expensive piece of ballast.

 

[stewlewis]

Using SportTracks with your Garmin will provide more accurate (or just different?) calorie results, taking into account weather and wind too. Using the powertracks plugin will provide different results again.