Training and Racing With a Power Meter

Training and Racing with a Power Meter brings the advanced power-based training techniques of elite cyclists and triathletes to everyone.

A power meter can unlock more speed and endurance than any other training tool—for those who understand how to interpret their data. By quantifying exactly how much energy a cyclist expends, power meters lend unprecedented insight into a rider’s abilities and fitness. With the proper baseline data, a cyclist can use a power meter to determine workouts, long-term training, and even race strategy, pacing, and tactics.

Training and Racing with a Power Meter is the pioneering, cutting-edge guide that makes it possible for any rider to exploit the incredible usefulness of any power meter. Coach Hunter Allen and exercise physiologists Dr. Andy Coggan and Stephen McGregor show how to use a power meter to profile your strengths and weakness, how to measure fitness and fatigue, how to optimize your daily workouts, how to peak for races, and how to set and adjust your racing strategy while you are racing.

This new and extensively updated third edition:

• Enables cyclists and triathletes to predict future performance and time peak form
• Reveals methods of fatigue profiling, a new testing method to pinpoint weaknesses for a variety of short- and long-distance race formats
• Includes training plans to raise functional threshold power
• Offers power-based workouts tuned for your specific training goals
• Shares new case studies
• Provides new guidance for triathletes on pacing the bike and run
• Improves on the data visualization

Training and Racing with a Power Meter is the definitive, comprehensive guide to using a power meter. Armed with the revolutionary techniques from this guide, cyclists and triathletes can achieve lasting improvements and their best performances ever.

Hunter Allen is one of the world’s top experts in training with power meters. He is a USA Cycling Level 1 Cycling Coach, owner of the Peaks Coaching Group, and a former professional cyclist with the Navigators Team. He has been coaching endurance athletes of varied experience levels since 1995, and his athletes have achieved more than 1,000 victories and numerous national and world championship titles and medals. Allen has analyzed thousands of power-meter files. His efforts to help athletes and coaches communicate training information helped develop TrainingPeaks WKO+ software. Allen has been teaching USA Cycling power meter certification courses since 2005.

Andrew R. Coggan, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized exercise physiologist. He has published numerous scientific articles on a diverse range of topics, including the effects of carbohydrates on cycling performance, the physiological adaptations to endurance training, and the effects of aging on muscle metabolism during exercise. A national-caliber masters cyclist and time trial record holder, Dr. Coggan is also widely recognized as one of the leading experts on the use of power meters. He is the originator of the normalized power, TSS, power profiling, quadrant analysis, and the Performance Manager concepts. In 2006, he was honored for these applied sports science efforts with USA Cycling’s Sport Science Award and by being named as one of three Finalists for the US Olympic Committee’s Doc Counsilman Award.

Stephen McGregor, Ph.D., is an exercise physiologist and USA Cycling instructor. He is Director of the Applied Physiology Lab at Eastern Michigan University and a USA Cycling instructor who teaches coaches about physiology, general training, and training with a power meter. McGregor also coaches for Peaks Coaching Group. His own experience, first as an elite cyclist and more recently as a masters-level athlete, helps him keep the science and data analysis grounded in the day-to-day concerns of training and racing.