Useless on trails and steep hills
The main problem I’ve found with the Stryd running power meter is that it’s useless off road and on steep hills, where the reading Styrd gives is inconsistent with effort on the flat.
So it’s useless for trail running.
Meh on the road
Styrd is consistent on the road and rolling hills, and I used it to train for a marathon, but it’s no better than pace, for which it is just a proxy anyway.
It’s not even as reliable as pace.
When I was training for that marathon, for some reason a few weeks before the race, my RE (running efficiency) improved out of sight. This changed my power numbers, and threw all my power thresholds out of whack.
I recalculated them, but I ended up using pace on the day.
But pace or time is probably always going to be the smartest metric to target on the road. Because, after all, pace or time is the real world thing you are measuring your performance with.
Why muddy the waters with a proxy?
So Styrd’s useless for the trails and not any better than pace on the roads.
Why use Stryd then?
Wind, hills and distance
The new version takes wind into account, so this might be useful for adjusting effort in blustery conditions. Although I have no idea how accurate the wind factoring is.
Styrd says its pod is good for pacing on the hills. But again, pace should get you by in this case. And the pace reading on your watch doesn’t lag as much as the power number does — despite Styrd’s insistence it’s instantaneous.
Apparently Stryd is more accurate than GPS for measuring distance. I have no idea whether this is true.
Regardless, one use case I’ve read about is using the pod with your watch in a GPS-battery-saving mode to make your watch last longer. The Stryd eventually dies, but you’ll have more charge left in your watch than you otherwise would have.
Don’t believe the hype!
Despite what Stryd say, running power meters (indirect proxy measures concocted by algorithms) are not just like power meters in cycling (direct measures).
Unless they can perfect the algorithms so running power meters are consistent on the trails, no revolution will happen.
Would I buy another one?
Probably not. It’s too arbitrary and inconsistent over differing terrain.
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