Power Meter Install

I bought a power meter.  I do like fancy toys, but mainly got one because Jason said on long rides I tend to spike my power and as a result am kind of all over the map in terms of effort and output.  That offhand comment started several weeks of me searching online for power meters.  I wanted to buy a used one as I didn't want to pay heaps of cash for it; after all I never really thought about getting one until the very ride that Jason said that.

I found a Stages one that was pretty lightly used and a good deal, and I also wanted to change to shorter cranks (from 172.5 to 170mm) so it seemed like a good time to do both.  I ordered the cranks once I had the power meter, and they came with a new bottom bracket so that got refreshed at the same time as well.

Installing the new bottom bracket.

Jason at work at his favourite hobby -
bike maintenance.

Installing the left side crank arm.

The actual power meter on the inside
of the left crank arm.  Pretty simple.

Done and ready to be tried out on the trainer.

Once all the components were installed, I turned on my Garmin (Edge 500).  It took a bit of mumbo-jumbo in the settings and handing it over to Jason (my patience for fiddling with electronic devices is not high) to get the power meter to pair with the Garmin.  I handled the calibration on my own though, which was basically turn the crank arms so one was straight up and the other straight down, and hit calibrate.  Ta da!

Trying it out.  Now to figure out what the numbers
mean, what I need to know, and what I do with the data.

I selected some data fields from the list in the menu to have on the screen, and jumped on my bike on the trainer to see if any numbers would come up.  It worked!  Now I just have to figure out my FTP (Functional Threshold Power), and then have to figure out what I actually do with that number once I have it.  Stay tuned!