Had a little demo on a Wattbike yesterday, even though my club owns two and I've never been arsed with them!
So I'm an old dog. I've gone from a 1970s big ring stomper to a steady 94rpm twiddler.
I've now used a HRM for two of my thirty five racing years.
So watts?
Chatting to the salesman yesterday whilst spinning in my jeans and trainers my pre 'ride proper' output was 254 average.
But in simple laymans terms what's it all about?
It is simply a measure of your power output. A power meter gives you an unambiguous measure of your performance, so you can target specific training zones effectively, and get an objective measure of how your performance changes with time.
Heart rate can be used as an indicator of your work rate, but for various reasons it is less accurate (e.g. your measured heart rate for a given power output could be affected by illness or how tired you are).
If a power meter says you are producing 200W, you are producing 200W, regardless of other factors.
I produced 1275 watts on one at the Dalby world cup and won a water bottle if thats any help. 
To make any sense of the '254 watts' part you first need to know what the 'pre ride proper' was all about - given the value of ~250W is *might* have been some type of really simple 'threshold' type test - but as you were wearing jeans and chatting - it likely wasn't performed with any precision (or the required effort). It might just be that the average power during your ride was 254W.
I am just taking my powermeter out for a spin - but if you want to email me we could talk about POWER some more - I do this stuff for a living.
Okay.
Well it wasn't really a test, it was more a chat to gain an understanding of how they work, as I said we are the 'custodians' of two wattbikes.
He asked me to jump on one as he explained the various features. TBH he was more interested the efficiency bit. apparently I produce a good sausage shape!
The watts bit was a bit of an aside.
Very interesting. It struck me yesterday how much science there is in the sport. And as I've harped on many times in the past, the science was simple.
Get up early, eat steak and pasta.
Ride one hundred miles.
Don't drink anything.
Quite envious of the folk starting out these days
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