I am new to intervals.icu having just found it. I am very excited to use some of the incredible functionality and intend migrating those I coach over to this platform from Today’s Plan. Thank you for creating it and continuing to grow its functionality.
One chart that I use from Today’s Plan to track athlete progression is a chart showing average power output at heart rate per season. Some of the available charts in intervals.icu “almost” get there but not quite. I am wondering how easy this would be the add as an option.
I too am interested in this proposed chart and look forward to its arrival.
Can you please explain the two red lines of 100% Threshhold HR and current Threshhold Power from your attachment? It seems to me that, by definition, the 100% Threshhold HR is set where the current Threshhold Power meets the respective annual trend lines. How can the intersection of these lines not meet at least one of these lines?
I am not sure I fully understand your question but let me try answer it. I assume 100% threshold power is universally understood. That is FTP derived from a threshold test. Threshold power is not as straightforward. Sometimes it is used as power at lactate anaerobic threshold, sometimes as average HR during a 20 min test, etc, etc. Whatever way it is defined, it is irrelevant for this graph. In fact, I don’t pay any attention to threshold HR settings at all. There is no correlation between threshold HR and where it meets any other data points on the graph.
You will see in the graph that there are three colours. You will notice on the graph that the bottom is green, middle yellow and top is red. This colours correspond with a 3 heart rate zone model I use. I carried out lactate testing on this athlete, established his aerobic threshold (green zone is his aerobic HR zone) and his anaerobic threshold (red zone) and yellow is that tempo zone in the middle. This means that his threshold HR, according to blood lactate, is the bottom of the red block but, like I stated, it is irrelevant for this graph. I have created the 3 colours by defining only 3 HR zones in Today’s Plan instead of the more common 6, something that cannot be done in intervals.icu (I will annoy David another time on that one!). Today’s Plan also allows me to assign a colour to each HR zone.
In the base training period what I want to see is that the athlete’s aerobic power is increasing so the grey line is moving to the right compared to the red line (data from last season). You will see there is very little separation in the red zone. This is because this athlete has not raced this season due to race cancellations. In the 2019 data we would have race files so there is a lot of very high power for very brief time periods. Think of constant attacks and accelerations and a lot of on/off type surges. That has the effect of pushing up the power but the power comes off again before the HR has time to react. This is skewing the 2019 data and because he has not raced this season we are not getting a like-for-like data set with 2020. I know this athlete has made significant progress without getting him to do FTP tests because of the separation in the aerobic zone.
Hope this makes sense and I have somewhat addressed your question!
Thanks for replying. I think I get the direction that you’re heading, particularly in the final paragraph, but you haven’t addressed my issue.
The first paragraph is really unclear to me. You suggest power at lactate anaerobic threshold and average HR during a 20 min test when I think you are describing threshold HR. You seem unfazed by that as you say that There is no correlation between threshold HR and where it meets any other data points on the graph.
I guess that gets to the hub of my original question. That question was based on the simple notion that the threshhold HR (over an extended number of tests) will occur BY DEFINITION at the point of threshhold power.
Your lactate testing has accurately identified the points of inflection at the aerobic and anaerobic threshholds, with the threshhold HR being at the bottom of your Red zone.
If that’s correct, why couldn’t you use that to see where the corresponding threshhold power for each year where that line meets the respective trend? I’d make that 184W for 2019 and 205W for 2020. I get that the threshhold power of about 222W is probably from a standard test, but doesn’t your data give you the chance to have the true power determined from the rider’s physiology?
