Hello,
I have some doubt regarding my fitness signature since my maximal power in the short time regime seems to be to high. Currently my signature is TP: 188, HIE: 36.2 and PP: 1463. According to my fitness signature my 1 minute power = 644W and 3 minute power = 373. Furthermore I have also checked my ranking which states that I am in the following percentiles:
Last week I came across a workout which prescribed to sustain my 1 Minute power (644) for 30 seconds for several intervals. I haven’t tried the workout since I have never sustained more than 561 watts and I a pretty sure that this will be impossible to me. I have flagged all activities which have a maximal power of over 561 watts. So I assume that any powermeter spikes are not considered in the signature calculation. Now I am wondering why my short time powers are so high. I have a feeling that my PP should be much lower than 1463.
Looks like you’ve had a few activities with faulty power readings. I made a couple adjustments to your profile, want to check them out and let me know what you think?
Hi Scott,
thank you very much!! Now my profile parameters make much more sense. I had some problems with my Vector 3 Powermeter which was causing erroneous data. There where problems with the battery contacts due to oxidation which caused an insulating film. At the moment I solved the problem by cleaning the contacts an applying mineral oil on the contacts.
Nevertheless, is there a possibility for me do detect faulty power readings and clean them up using Xert? Probably this problem can appear again in the future.
Thank you again for the quick adjustments and I wish you a nice weekend.
I was about to ask if you own Vector 3 pedals by chance. Those screwed up my numbers, until long after I had ditched them and got Favero Assioma’s. Disastrous (battery compartment) design and prone to power drops and spikes, but not enough people experiencing - and complaining about - it to cause mass riots…
I actually got my Vector3 replaced once by Garmin and everything worked fine till the first battery change. After that, the problems started again. I was about to throw my pedals against the wall and buy Favero Assioma’s, but due to my higher monetary expenses for cycling in the last months I continued to search for a technical solution. After watching some Youtube videos I came across the solution of contact cleaner and oil. I am still not really happy to have to do this every time I change my batteries, but I can live with it. The next pair of pedals will definetively be from Favero.
They replaced mine too, with a ‘fixed’ battery problem, but the same problem continued to happen and besides, they eat expensive coin cells for breakfast. So glad I ditched them - got just over half my money back from someone who didn’t mind…
You should do a quick check of a session when it uploads, and you’re looking for unexplainable large jumps in your fitness signature (TP, HIE, or PP). We do have a filter designed to catch these errors as they’re uploaded, but some errors still manage to work their way through. Most often its an error with PP, and the activity simply needs to be flagged. HTH!
You can use fitfiletools.com to eliminate these spikes. Still not ideal, but maybe better than flagging. Sadly, there is no way to fix power drop (zero power) as you can cut off spikes above a certain value, but you can only increase power a percentage.
Thanks for the advice Scott. I just checked the graphs of my signature during the last 6 weeks. The only jumps I have seen where caused by breakthrough activities. So I assume that for breakthrough activities jumps are allowed.
Yes and no, I guess (but Scott will correct me) - if the BT is from an increase in PP, you may still be victim of a spike, even if the BT is only recognized after ~5 seconds of sustaining that power. The Vector erroneous spikes are often shorter than that, so they should be filtered out.
If the BT is a result of you pulling MPA down below TP, and thus increase TP, the same may apply. So, if you analyze such a BT and your power curve looks normal, no problem, otherwise, check if removing suspicious data would still result in a BT…
It all / also depends on how worried you are about your signature being precise to within a few Watts. It’s just that faulty data will have an effect on your signature for a long time, longer than I expected anyway.
Yes, so long as they are expected - such as when your training load is increasing. When Low, High, and Peak training loads increase, we expect an increase in TP, HIE, and PP, respectively. If you get a breakthrough that jumps TP up 30W suddenly, despite constant training, or a 200+W jump in PP, you may want to look a little closer at the activity data and potentially flag it if there were errors. HTH