What difficulties have you experienced?

What difficulties have you experienced?

This is part of a series of posts on runners’ feedback about Running with Power.

Based on survey responses and book research, here are the top three difficulties runners experienced using power.

1. Getting Started

There is a learning curve associated with using power: fundamental concepts that power is based on; things you should and shouldn’t do. However, these are well-known, documented and often discussed in the power-focused Facebook groups – it just takes time.

The setup can also be quite complicated – whether you’re using Stryd or using wrist-based power. With a little patience, it’s possible to end up with a watch setup and supporting application setup that work well. It’s just harder than the setup needed to run using pace or heart rate.

2. Maintaining a valid Threshold Power

Your Threshold Power is a measure of your current running fitness, and is a foundation metric when Running with Power.

There are three commonly-used test protocols, all of which produce a usable Threshold Power.

But they all rely on maximum effort runs – and it’s this aspect that runners found difficult.

Fortunately for most runners, max-effort runs, while always difficult, got easier to execute with practice.

3. Learning to run using power

Many runners were already be used to running using pace, HR or perceived effort.

They reported that it took time to fully trust power, and to stop relying on the other metrics.

Other difficulties

There were other difficulties runners experienced using power:

• using power in mountainous, windy or other ‘unusual’ environments
• that power represents your effort (rather than actually being your effort, like cycling)
• that it was easy to forget (or forget to charge) the pod
• that it was difficult to explain to others

None of the above difficulties were insurmountable, and many are just a consequence of trying something new and unfamiliar.