Comments for DC Rainmaker

Comment on The Stages Power Meter In-Depth Review Update by Changren Yong

Changren Yong — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:40:27 +0000

Just received a SRAM Rival (175) GXP Stages power meter today. It weighs 240g. The SRAM Red Exogram crank arm (with a Garmin GSC-10 magnet still attached) i removed weighs 150g.

Comment on How to find & create awesome cycling routes in a smarter way by Henry

Henry — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:25:02 +0000

Or you could just use ridewithgps.com or download a GPX file directly from Strava. I’ve run into similar issues trying to create my own routes.

Comment on The Stages Power Meter In-Depth Review Update by Chris

Chris — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:14:08 +0000

Hi Ray! Great review although i can hardly understand. I don’t have a powermeter and is looking to buy my first one, and of course, the stages one seems to do less damage to the wallet, especially me being a student. I don’t exactly understand powermeter. I would like to ask you how oval and non-circle chainrings like the osymetric will affect the crank based powermeters. It was mentioned in the slowtwitch article (link: link to slowtwitch.com) but i don’t quite understand it. Maybe you could explain it in simpler terms or in other words, make it idiot-proof. Adding on, what can be done to minimize or completely remove this effect if say the effect of the non-circle chainrings are negative. Thanks!

Comment on Paris Blog: A look at the one and the only Parisian Chipotle by Ali

Ali — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:46:58 +0000

Chipotle in the US just came out with using GMO ingredients. They are listed in the ingredients section of their website. Out of curiosity, I checked the French website. Their ingredients page is quite different and not as well-labeled. Do you know what the French stance on Chipotle and GMOs are? I haven’t lived there in a few years, so I was not familiar with the labels the meat had on your picture of the menu. I’d love any insight you (or others) may have! Thanks!

Comment on The Stages Power Meter In-Depth Review Update by Rainmaker

Rainmaker — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:33:50 +0000

Funny, someone just asked this yesterday via e-mail. Here’s my standard CompuTrainer calibration ‘approach’:

1) Tighten screw/knob until I can hold the flywheel (blue thing) and then if I try and move the wheel, it won’t budge.
2) Then on the handlebar unit go into calibration mode (two buttons at once), and spin up to 25MPH and let it coast until it flashes a new number
3) If the number is at ~2.5 (cold, pre-ride), then it’ll ‘drift’ to about 2.0 by time you finish a 10-20 minute warmup. If the number is anything beyond that, reduce resistance and repeat. If already warmed up, then you’re (officially) aiming for 1.8 to 2.2. For reviews I aim for 2.00.
4) Press set to confirm
5) It should now show the new calibration value.

I used to do 10 minutes warm-up on the CompuTrainer, but I found (as part of these reviews actually) that I was still seeing drift. 15 minutes is pretty good, but 20 minutes solved it entirely. My workouts essentially include a 10-minute warm-up (for me), then a 10 minute cadence drill section. So I’ve been doing it after both sections for reviews.

Comment on The Stages Power Meter In-Depth Review Update by Rainmaker

Rainmaker — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:29:59 +0000

Hi Bob-

Note, I manual zero’d twice during that ride. As noted, once at 0min, and again at 15min. While another manual reset would have been interesting from a numbers standpoint, at that point in my ride an auto-zero seemed to put it back in check (temporarily anyway).

This is actually an area that spawned an interesting conversation amongst myself, Garmin, O-Synce and the ANT+ guys (this very ride). The idea of recording the offset values in the .FIT. O-Synce has seemingly taken the lead there and is already working with both the ANT+ folks as well as a number of the power meter companies on accomplishing this. Good stuff.

This was really the one rare circumstance where I’ve seen anything like this from a Quarq.