Strava now offers a range of power analysis features for its Premium members who use power meters.
Strava is a free service that lets riders upload their GPS files and automatically ranks their times on segments of their rides, while riding buddies can follow each others' activities.
The $59 (£36) annual Premium service already offered a few more features, such as heart rate analysis, but its expansion with the new "Advanced Power Training Analysis" seems to hold a bit more interest for enthusiast riders.
Strava's current free service offers a power estimation based on variables like elevation gain, speed and rider weight, but this isn't remotely as accurate as using actual wattage data pulled from a power meter.
The new power features includes charts of power distribution over a specific ride or a given period, time spent in a particular training zone (as determined by your functional threshold power), and your 'best efforts' power curve that compares your output on a given ride with your all-time best efforts.
The data can be shown in total watts or in watts per kilogram.
And, yes, this being Strava, you can also compare your power numbers to that of your friends and foes.
The power features also include a calculation of training load based on your FTP.
The 'best efforts' section compares your power on a given ride to your historic best efforts for different durations, ranging from 1 second to 3 hours
While still not as robust as some dedicated power training products such as TrainingPeaks' WKO+, this new set of power features definitely ups Strava's game.
Strava also rolled out another Premium feature that lets users set time and distance goals, then Strava charts the progress as rides are uploaded.
You can check it out at www.strava.com/premium.
