PowerTap P1S Troubleshooting: What the Manual Doesn't Tell You

When I received my PowerTap P1S pedals in the mail I was pretty excited. Excited to get them on my bike and start figuring out how to optimize my power output for long rides, especially half Ironman and Ironmans.

And one of the reasons I bought the PowerTap pedals was because of their easy installation which is really no different than putting on any other pedals. So after threading them into the cranks of my Canyon Aeroad, I took the bike out for a quick spin. Just to see if they worked and to prepare for the next morning's ride.

This may be one of the most powerful tools of all to improve my bike pacing, especially for longer distance triathlons. #cyclists #roadbiking #triathlon #triathlontraining #powertap #powermeter #singapore #bintan703 #cebu703

A post shared by Andrew Patterson (@andrewridesandruns) on Feb 9, 2017 at 2:57am PST

But to my dismay, nothing showed up on the screen of my Garmin 520, even after riding about 150m. This was after the usual ANT+ pairing process that we've all done. Well, not nothing, but no power reading. Cadence, however did appear. And I knew this was being transmitted by the PowerTaps and not my Garmin because I had removed the Garmin cadence sensor from my cranks.

So that meant an ANT+ signal was getting through.

Then a message appeared on the screen: "No right pedal detected". Which was fair enough, since the right pedal is a dummy and the left is the power pedal.

Then another: "Calibrate power meter". OK, I thought, and I selected it. After a few seconds the Garmin gave a seemingly-random number reading: "9".

A quick glance at the manual that came with the PowerTap and there were no references to calibration or troubleshooting ANT+ or Bluetooth connections. But then I had an idea: Download the PowerTap app and see if I could get it to connect there.

Then I'd be testing if it was an ANT+ antenna issue somewhere (either in the pedals or the Garmin). I quickly got the app installed and had the same result: Cadence showed up but no power.

Next, I called 1-800-246-5975 (the number on the PowerTap website) and was surprisingly attended to immediately by an informed and helpful human being.

He systematically walked me through a few steps:
1. Is the green light flashing on your left pedal?
2. Are you sure you have paired it with the right ANT+ ID number? Double-check.
3. Does your Garmin have the latest firmware update?
4. Do you have the PowerTap app installed and can you pair the app and the pedals?
5. If so, do you have the latest PowerTap firmware update?
6. Next, can you see a power reading on the app?
7. Can you see a cadence reading on the app?
8. Have you calibrated the pedals and did it return a figure between -26 and +26? (I may be mistaken on those values, but I think that's what he asked me.)
9. Finally, he told me that if I really couldn't get them to work, I should contact Clever Training (the shop I bought them from) and they'll be able to work out a return.

I figured I'd give it one more shot and try riding again. So I took the bike outside and starting riding circles around my condo, but nothing. I kept watching the app, kept checking the Garmin, but only cadence would come through. So it felt like it was an ANT+ issue.

My next course of action was to try to pair it to another Garmin, in this case my watch (the amazing Fenix 3 HR)...when suddenly, a power reading appeared!

It seemed that I just had to ride a bit more for it to somehow happen. The instruction manual never says this is the case, and mine may be an exception, but if you have trouble getting the power to show up, ride your bike for a few minutes longer than you may expect. I ended up having to ride 600m before it appeared.

Other than the issues getting it hooked up, I'm pretty confident this was an excellent purchase.

Average Speeds in Strava and Garmins & Cheating Segments

Average speed can a good way to track performance over time, and also compare between riders. After all, how many of us are not a little bit competitive?

But average speed, if calculated in certain ways, can be very misleading. It can make you look a lot faster or a lot slower than you really are.

Example 1: Record only the fast parts
A group I ride with, which incidentally is very fast, likes to make themselves look even faster by only recording the core (fast) sections of their rides.

They don't start their Garmins until the ride has really begun - all the time coasting out of their driveways and around stop signs to get to the main road gets excluded.

Same goes for the end of the rides - they stop their devices before any cool-down, right after the final sufferfest and final sprints.

The result is high average speeds but low(er) total distances.

Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with this. It's a matter of preference: Do you want faster or longer rides overall?

A real example. The ending is where the rider starts his slow section - the cool down.

These rides become apparent on Strava as the start and end are usually the beginning of the fast parts of a ride, not anybody's house. If the red line meanders into some small residential roads (the starting or ending of the ride) he's probably recording the entire ride, straight from home.

Or, like in the example above, the start and ending are at different places.

Example 2: Enable auto-pause
If you use a Garmin, you'll find the auto-stop feature under Menu -> Training -> Auto Pause/Lap. By setting "Auto Timer Pause" to "When Stopped", the timer will momentarialy stop when you are at red lights or stop signs.

The Auto Timer Setting in the Garmin Edge 705

With this setting off, at stop signs you will observe two things:
1. Your timer will continue
2. Your average speed will slowly erode. So if you are stopped for long enough, your average speed will eventually hit zero, or very close, even if you've been hammering it at 45 km/h for the whole ride.

Or, instead of selecting "When Stopped", you could use the "Custom Speed" setting, which will stop the timer whenever your speed is lower than the custom speed. For example, if you set it to 5 km/h, the timer will stop when you are going 4 km/h, for example. This is to eliminate any erroneous timing as a result of any minor movements while essentially stopped.

Protip: Some people claim is possible to cheat Strava by setting a custom speed and then completing a segment by moving slower than that custom speed. By doing so, you can get the KOM.

However, Strava's take differs: 

"...stopped time is included in segment time to keep leaderboards competitive. So using autopause does not allow for cheating on segments. We time segments based on the time stamp from when you enter a segment and when you finish it, it is not based on the "ride-time" that occurred on a segment but rather the elapsed time."

Source: Strava Knowledge Base

Personally, I record my entire ride, including the slow parts just getting to the main roads, and the cool-down coming home. This gives me a lower average speed.

I do enable the auto-pause; I don't think it's accurate to be recording stops, whether they are breaks or red lights.

However, if you are using Strava, most of this really doesn't matter. Strava will automatically crop out your stops, giving you that faster average speed. So you could have an average speed recording of 28.0 km/h on your Garmin, but 30.0 in Strava.

This seems consistent with the idea that you can cheat and get KOMs by completing a segment slower than your custom threshold speed. In fact, you can even set your custom speed to 99.9 km/h....

So next time you see a 40km/h average find out how it was recorded, and next time you see the slowest guy around getting KOMs which you know he's not capable of, ask him what his threshold speed is set to.

Olympic MTBers on Strava

Following a post I did a while back about which Olympic cyclists are on Strava, which focused mostly on road, here's a full audit of the MTBers in the Olympics that are on Strava:

• Georgia Gould; American - Strava profile; Olympics profile - won bronze in women's MTB
• Lea Davison; American - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Manuel Fumic; German - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Nino Schurter; Swiss - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Michael Vingerling; Dutch - Strava profile; Olympics profile

Here are a few more that have little to no Strava uploads or activity:

• Philip Buys; South African - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Kohei Yamamoto; Japanese - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Gerhard Kerschbaumer; Italian - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Todd Wells; American - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Periklis Ilias; Greek - Strava profile; Olympics profile

Olympians who use Strava

When watching the cycling time trials in the London 2012 Olympics I noticed some of the riders had Garmins on their bikes. My first thought was that these guys would go upload their rides to Strava right away - worried more about getting the KOM than the gold medal!

Notice the Garmin (at a funny angle) on Emma Pooley's TT bike
(July 31, 2012 - Source: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe)

So I did a few searches within Strava to see which of these Olympians were, first of all, on Strava, and then whether or not they really uploaded their rides.

There are dozens of them who use Strava, which was no surprise. Like the rest of us, some use it more than others. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that any uploaded their actual Olympics events.

However, I did find a few training rides just before the events:

• Clara Hughes; Canadian - Strava profile; Olympics profile - Group ride with Wiggins, Pinotti, and Cancellara at the Olympics
• Ina Teutenberg; German - Strava profile; Olympics profile - 3 QOMs on a final training ride before her race
• Taylor Phinney; American, 4th place in Men's Individual Time Trail - Strava profile; Olympics profile - 2 KOMs on a training ride before the race
• Marco Pinotti; Italian, 5th place in Men's Individual Time Trial - Strava profile; Olympics profile - Same group ride as Hughes above

Besides these four I found many others within Strava, most of them women for some reason. It's interesting to note that all of the Germans below and the one above (Teutenberg) live in California.

• Amber Neben; American - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Evelyn Stevens; American - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Lea Davison; American - Strava profile; Olympics profile (rides mountain bike)
• Lisa Brennauer; German - Strava profile; Olympics profile (rides track)
• Trixi Worrack; German - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Charlotte Becker; German - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Chloe Hosking; Australian - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Ellen van Dijk; Dutch - Strava profile; Olympics profile
• Eilia Fahlin; Swedish - Strava profile; Olympics profile

It's pretty fun to study their ride stats, though if I were a professional racer I don't think I'd be putting these up for the public. And if I did, I'd certainly leave out my best rides. So don't take them too seriously.

And whatever you do, don't do the side by side comparison unless you want to feel really weak and slow.

Choosing a GPS Device for Strava: Mobile Phone or GPS?

I'm going to assume you know what Strava is - the website that times and maps your rides (or runs) and then compares them with others who have done the same ride or part of ride. You record the ride using a GPS device, and when finished, upload it to the Strava site and can then see how fast you were compared to others.

A screen capture of the Strava interface

I have been using Strva now for about nine months, starting with an iPhone. I always carry my phone with me on rides in case I get injured badly enough that I need to call for help or for other emergencies, so this is convenient.

With a mobile device (iOS or Android) you must download the Strava app, and then start it when you begin your ride. When you finish, click "end ride" and the data automatically upload to the Strava site. This is alwasy very easy for me, except about 2-3 times when the app has failed to record my rides. Strava has since rewritten the app and I don't think these bugs exist any more.

In November I bought a Garmin GPS from a neighbor who rides and who recently bought a newer Garmin. It came with the heart rate monitor and cadence sensor. I installed the cadence sensor on my road bike, and use the heart rate monitor on both road and off-road rides.

To use the Garmin is a bit more complex - first you have to ensure you have recieved a satellite signal, which I find can be difficult if you are moving or if the sky is very cloudy. (The iPhone gets a signal immediately via its 3G connection). Then, you have to press "Start/Stop" when you begin the ride and when you end.

The next step is to connect the Garmin to your computer with the USB cable (which also doubles as a charger). Now forget about the Garmin Connect site. Go to Strava.com, download some applet or driver from the site (which I had trouble doing in Chrome on a PC but no issues with in Chrome on a Mac), and the site will detect your Garmin.

Finally, you need to click on "Upload Activity" and subsequently select the events (rides) it finds in your Garmin using checkboxes, and hit "Upload". You can then name the ride, crop it, specify which bike you were on, and add comments or notes about it ("Saw pink pangolin" "Kristan made me sniff his gloves").

It will include any heart rate and cadence data that your mobile phone can't record.

So which is better? Originally I thought the Garmin would be superior for Strava, but eventually I realized the iPhone has its distinct advantages. Here are the pros and cons I see in each:

Mobile
Pros

• No need to buy a new device if you already have an iPhone or Android
• Upload happens instantly after the ride - no need to connect to your computer. Great when you ride fast in the morning and then rush off to work and don't have time to upload it manually.
• Can record speed, distance, and location even underground, in carparks, under heavy clouds or other places a GPS-only device cannot. This is due to its 3G connection. This is a major bonus for me.
• The app interface lets you see your speeds, history, records, and more - it even synchs with rides you did on your Garmin meaning it'll show your full Strava history

Cons

• Doesn't show real-time data - meaning during a ride distance or speed at any given moment will be wrong. Major drawback
• Doesn't record heart rate or cadence
• The elevation it records is amusingly innacurate - sometimes speeds are too - but the mapping and distance are accurate
• Drains your battery but has never killed mine - can easily handle 5-6 hours of recording so not an issue unless you'll be riding longer than that

GPS (Garmin)
Pros

• Real-time monitoring - this is invaluable to me, especially when I'm racing
• Has many other awesome features that could help you be a faster or more efficeint rider like averages (speed, cadence, heart rate), total distance traveled, sunrise and sunset, tons of data
• Specific to Strava, the heart rate and cadence are important in calculating the Strava Sufferscore, an estimation of how much pain you endured which considers heart rate level, distance, time, and more.
• Depending on the model you have you can see where you are on a map. Even some of the older Garmins that don't support maps can still help in navigation by at least showing your compass heading and a trail of where you have been.
• Water, mud, and crashproff to some degree

Cons

• They're kind of expensive once you buy the heart rate monitor and cadence sensor
• If you leave it plugged into your computer to charge it, then shut off your computer, its battery may simply run down without you knowing it - a big bummer when your ride starts (that's when you use the iPhone as backup)
• Spotty satellite reception at times, and slow to pick it up (up to 5 minutes)

If I had to choose one I'd still go for the Garmin, only for the invaluable race and training data I get from the heart rate monitor and cadence sensor.