polar cs 600

[Parrott]

i havnt even really started to use mine but after a few quick goes i can see how its a powerfull training aid and it is really good on a indoor trainer

They aren't prolific in our club yet, only one bloke with a cs600 so far. I'll worry about it when everyone starts getting them, don't want to start another arms race in the club

You may surprise yourself; there is nothing to say that your natural ability without one will be better then someone with one.
This just my thought and not a criticism

Most of us are training without them here, hope the status quo remains, it's alot cheaper.

[Parrott]

Spoke to the fella in our club with the cs600 today. So reliable he's taken it off, had too many hassles with it.

[twizzle]

Most of the early wireless seems to be as reliable as a politician. The ANT+ stuff seems to be pretty damned good though.

[Ross]

Just saw this thread and thought I would put my 2c worth in about Polar CS600. I have one on my bike but I have had a few dramas with it. I bought it direct from Polar, I can't recall exactly how much I paid, it was on special for about $600ish I think. The first one arrived and the power thingy (technical term! ) that goes on the chainstay was DOA. Rang Polar and they sent me a new one, didn't want the old one back even, which leads me to believe it's a common fault with them. Got the new bit and set the computer up (actually a mate did, I'm a bit of a technophobe! ) and it was working fine. I only used the readings as displayed 'live', never downloaded info because a)I'm a bit of a technophobe and b)my computer doesn't have infa-red port and the USB adaptor I bought that is supposed to make it work, doesn't.

Now, about six months on the power and cadence have stopped working again, looks like the chainstay thingy has carked it again. I think I'll just ask Polar for a refund and buy a cheaper HRM without power.

[Aushiker]

Hi

I was wondering if anyone had experience with the CS600X and the associated GPS unit.





Regards
Andrew

[craigg]

I'll weigh into the debate with my experience of the Quarq Cinqo. It's ANT+ and I've been using it with a Garmin Edge 705. The Cinqo replaces the stock spider and as I had Shimano (integrated spider) I've replaced the entire crank with an SRAM S900. So far it seems to work quite well - the accuracy seems ok and it gives very consistent readings from ride to ride. I bought it thinking that I'd be referring to it constantly whilst riding but this has turned out not to be the case. It is much more valuable to download and analyse the data after a ride correlating with heartrate and cadence, speed etc and relate it back to PE. It's also good for indoor training where you can do a VO2 max style graduated ride and measure your effort and improvement over time. For example if I know that my LT is 280 watts I can work on improving that on the trainer. Knowing what 500 watts feels like and knowing I can sustain it for say 30 seconds means I can pace a climb or judge whether to chase down a breakaway etc.

The Edge itself does a good job of measuring and reporting on power. The Garmin Training Software won't download power, you'll need something like WKO+ for that, but seeing as the Cinqo does both power and cadence I can leave the Edge speed/cadence sensor on the audax bike and swap the Edge between bike profiles to use it on both bikes. One limitation is that the WKO+ software needs the power recorded at constant intervals, meaning that you can't use the smart recording feature of the Garmin. This seems to place too much load on the Edge where there's not enough grunt to data log per second (speed, HR, position, cadence, power) AND use the navigation and mapping features. You get spurious data points. In practise however this isn't an issue as I only tend to use navigation on my audax bike and things seem to log and simultaneously navigate ok with no power meter.

Craig

[twizzle]

Just use SportsTracks - craps all over the Garmin software. And check out what you can do with GoldenCheetah, as it generates normalised power and 'BikeScore' (TSS) numbers. I load my PowerTap data into GoldenCheetah, then manally set up TRIMP scores for the TrainingLoad plugin in SportsTracks to keep track of the training effort. You might have to export the data from SportsTracks to load into GoldenCheetah (reads multiple file types including TCX, so there should be something compatible there). Occasionally I still use the Garmin software to export specific laps when SportsTracks can't handle a large gap in a single lap (when I've 'stopped' the timer but not hit the lap button before 'starting' again the next day).