Validating My Power Delivery Optimiser: Introduction

In one of my earliest blog posts (here) from 2015, I described the power delivery optimiser that I created using Microsoft Excel.

I also used it to help a friend try to improve his personal best time for his favourite bike route (here). In doing so, I showed that my power delivery optimiser gave a similar optimal power profile to the profile that BestBikeSplit gave.

However, I have never properly validated my optimiser, or BestBikeSplit either, to prove that following those power targets does indeed give an improvement in performance.  It should do of course, because there is no reason why the modelling should have deficiencies.  Nevertheless, it would be satisfying to validate it properly, and this is what I intend to do in the coming weeks.

I have several steps in mind, because I also intend to improve my Excel-based power delivery optimiser so that it's generally easier to use.  This blog post is the first step, where I'll outline what I intend to do.  I'll then write additional blog posts as I make progress, and will update this post to include the relevant links.

The summary below describes briefly what I'll do and includes links to the more recent blog posts that will describe in more details the studies and the results.

Summary and links

• Step 1:  Gathering data for the reference case (constant power).
• Step 2:  Determine rider/bike parameters (CdA, Crr, weight).
• Step 3:  Use BestBikeSplit to create an optimum power delivery profile.
• [To be done] Step 4: Calculating the optimum power delivery profile using my optimiser.
• [To be done] Step 5: Improve my power delivery optimiser.
• [To be done] Step 6:  Calculate the optimum power profile for the route cycled in Step 1.  Do the same for BestBikeSpilt and compare.
• [To be done] Step 7:  Re-ride the route following the optimum power profile, to see whether it improve the average speed versus the constant power approach done in Step 1.