Stages Power Meter

After spending a winter training with a power meter on my Wahoo KICKR, I wanted to get a power meter for my rides outdoors. Approximately a year ago I started reading about a simple solution by Stages Cycling. Their power meter solution is a modified left crank arm that encapsulates a stress meter directly on the crank. The advantages is that it is a simple solution that is easy to add. The costs, like many power meters on the market are relatively high, but it was one of the cheapest solutions. I placed my order when there was a 4-5 week back order. I figured that the MN winter wasn't ending anytime soon, so I could easily endure the wait. At exactly 4 weeks after ordering, this arrived at my front door.
The installation was a simple process if you know how to mount a Shimano crank arm. I initially compressed the bearing too much so I needed to redo the installation. That said, I spent less than 5 minutes for both installations including digging my torque wrench out of my tool box.

I have approximately 1 month on the bike with the power meter. I can say it works far better than I anticipated. There is an ever so slight delay between an initial increase/decrease in power being applied with when the power is registered on the head unit (a Garmin 510), but that was expected.

I'm already learning better pacing strategies for hills and riding into the wind. For both of these, I was really going too hard too soon. Now with some power targets, I'm finding I'm climbing hills in more of a predicable manner without going so anaerobic by the time I reach the summit.

More updates will follow as I collect more data.