I came to try intervals.icu because of the possibility of defining training plans, something that seems impossible for a giant like Garmin, where one can only define workouts.
Whilst I am still playing with it and finding out about all the possibilities I believe there is something missing.
Example:
Warmup
- 10m ramp Z1 HR
Main Set
- 50m Z1 HR
Cooldown
- 5m ramp Z1 HR
The resulting chart has an ascending ramp for the warmup phase and there is also an ascending ramp for the cooldown phase.
One may of course define a downwards ramp like this
Cooldown
- 5m ramp Z2-Z1 HR
This cannot obviously be applied to the scenario above because Z2 HR is not supposed to be reached.
The feature: ramp in a cooldown phase must always be interpreted as a “downwards” ramp. Probably even if the user wrote ramp Z1-Z2 HR, because one is cooling down (this would speed up copy and paste from the warmup phase)
A potential alternative is to define an additional keyword. Candidates: rampdown, downramp, slide.
Just a very very very minor thing for what I am slowly perceiving as an incredible product.
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But in this case, the starting and ending points are the same (Z1).
Have you tried refining this setup further using % of LTHR? With this approach, you might be able to achieve the desired outcome:
Warmup
- 10m ramp 50-60% LTHR
Main Set
- 50m 60% LTHR
Cooldown
- 5m ramp 60-50% LTHR
You needed to say 60-50% (downwards) to get a downramp, just as I pointed out.
It’s only a slight visual improvement, because a single ramp Z1 HR during the warmup phase generates an upwards ramp, whereas a ramp Z1 HR does also generate an upwards ramp during the cooldown phase.
Just a visual improvement for something already very good.
Oh, I see, now. I had never tried like you did. I’m actually surprised that we can have a ramp from z1 to… z1!
Here is the result:
The ramp is not from Z1 to Z1. It is from the initial (low) value of Z1 to the final (high) value of Z1.
It is actually sensible to see that as a ramp during the warmup phase, given that one starts cold and wants to reach a mid-high value in the range.
One can equally see how Z1 (or any other zone) can be considered as a downramp during the cooldown phase, going from the high value to the low value.
The same “downramp” concept in a single zone can be applied to recovery phases when doing repetitions (in this case a keyword to imply “downwards” would be the best solution, imho)
But like I said before, this is just a visual thing. The workout is sent nicely to my watch and it doesn’t care if I am supposed to be in a ramp upwards or downwards, I am just supposed to be in the zone
(Whether the “upwards”/“downwards” makes a difference for the evaluation of a workout, that is something I don’t know)
