Obree's new hour record attempt bike

Yes, respaced rear and integrated brakes removed. Had to use road cranks as track ones wouldn't fit.

I think the old fashioned way of watching the clock and 'walking the line' will work.

Yes, I imagine so, but unless they've just got the meter on there to see what he put out after the fact it would possibly be helpful to know that when you signalled Jens to push on a bit he actually had the ability to so do.

The beauty of the hour is that it's so simple. If he's down on schedule, he has to push. If he can't push, he won't make the record.

Incidentally, if you saw the comic this week, you'll have seen that Bottrill's coach had him down for a 45:38 last weekend before he even started, and that was on a road with junctions, traffic and weather to contend with. I wouldn't expect a ProTour team backed by one of the largest bike companies in the world to be less good at predicting exactly what Jens will be able to do alone on an indoor velodrome.

True, but what if he's up on schedule- they'd probably rein him in a bit so he doesn't risk blowing.

But if the coach could see that he was not, as his pace might suggest, on the very thinnest section of the ragged edge but had some distance to go he could give him his head as it were, and maybe get a significantly better result than otherwise might be the case.

It's touching that you continue to have faith that power output tells you anything about how close a rider is to his limit :-)

You're right, it's probably total bollocks and all the coach's who use power in their training are quacks.

How closely do you think power output maps to physiological stress? For a well trained athlete with a well controlled preparation (rest/recovery, nutrition/hydration, environmental conditions)? It's a no win situation for an hour record to be paced by power meter, if the athlete has a variability of over 1%, he has to ride in a zone of safety which might be well below his maximum, and if he has a variability of less than 1% then he is in the dark because the power meter error spans the zone he has between sustainability and collapse.

Power output is a proxy for effort; it's currently the best one we have which is small enough to be carried on a bike, but it's a delusion to believe that it's anything other than a proxy which can be confounded by uncontrolled variables.

So rather than having some data and be delusional it's better to have no data and infer what condition the athlete is in from past performances?

I don't see what Wheetabix has to do with this.

You've made it clear that you don't put any value on power as a metric, have you ever trained and/or raced with it, or is your position based upon an appraisal at arms length as it were?

If you read my comments in the power meter thread, you'll see why I think you're putting up a straw man. For all it's limitations, there's plenty of value in measuring power, my specific point in this thread is that it isn't a very useful way to set pace for an attempt on the hour record.

I'm not suggesting that it be used to set pace, but rather to see if said limitation on pace could be eased somewhat.

That aside, my point is a more general one that more data is (in general*) better than less data, if one is trying to make an evidence based decision on something.

*i.e. as long as you can process it in time etc

I'm not suggesting that it be used to set pace, but rather to see if said limitation on pace could be eased somewhat.

That's what's known as a distinction without a difference

*i.e. as long as you can process it in time etc

And as long as what you're measuring is what you think you're measuring. Taking a simple example, when aircraft started having problems with compressibility, they were relating it to the air speed measurement, but the problem was the Mach number. Air speed and Mach number are related, but not the same. Power output and physiological stress are related, but not the same.