Intervals.icu interval detection and training tool

[davidtinker]

I have added support for editing ride data. Look for the "Edit Data" button under the main activity timeline charts. This is useful to fix power and heartrate spikes. Note that Intervals.icu automatically compensates for drop outs and suspicious zeros in power data so you generally don't need to fix those.

[RossW]

I have added support for editing ride data. Look for the "Edit Data" button under the main activity timeline charts. This is useful to fix power and heartrate spikes. Note that Intervals.icu automatically compensates for drop outs and suspicious zeros in power data so you generally don't need to fix those.

Thanks David.

Am I looking at the correct location?

[davidtinker]

Yes you are. You probably just need to reload the app. The "Edit Data" button should be to the left of "Add Interval".

[davidtinker]

Intervals.icu now supports capturing W' or anaerobic work capacity. You can set your value in Joules in settings and the current value is assigned to and can be edited for each ride. This supposed to model how much work in Joules you can do above FTP (well critical power really) before blowing up. 10 seconds at 400w is 4000 J of work, its as simple as that. When you are riding below FTP you recover capacity.

 

You can add a "W'bal" chart to the ride timeline to see this in action. This shows how much of your W' is remaining when you go over FTP. The green chart below shows the W'bal for one of my rides. I did a decent effort up Kloof Nek and it goes below zero. This indicates that my FTP or W' might have gone up. Pity I was a bit fat at the time or I might have got a PR.

 

 

You can get an estimate of your W' from the power section. However it is quite sensitive to the inputs so you really do need real maximum 5s, 3m and 10m+ efforts to get good data.

Edited March 14, 2019 by davidtinker

[RossW]

Intervals.icu now supports capturing W' or anaerobic work capacity. You can set your value in Joules in settings and the current value is assigned to and can be edited for each ride. This supposed to model how much work in Joules you can do above FTP (well critical power really) before blowing up. 10 seconds at 400w is 4000 J of work, its as simple as that. When you are riding below FTP you recover capacity.

 

You can add a "W'bal" chart to the ride timeline to see this in action. This shows how much of your W' is remaining when you go over FTP. The green chart below shows the W'bal for one of my rides. I did a decent effort up Kloof Nek and it goes below zero. This indicates that my FTP or W' might have gone up. Pity I was a bit fat at the time or I might have got a PR.

 

Screenshot 2019-03-14 at 21.53.40.png

 

You can get an estimate of your W' from the power section. However it is quite sensitive to the inputs so you really do need real maximum 5s, 3m and 10m+ efforts to get good data.

Thanks David.

 

One thing I've picked up. I added my approximate J level in the settings section. When I visit activities after adding the value to the settings page, I have blanks. I then need to add "J" value for each activity. It's not being carried through from the settings page.

[RossW]

Further to the W' function.

It got me thinking, "What is my W'?"

 

I found a site that calculates an AWC (W') using some of your previous tested/personal best interval power averages. Apologies David, if intervals.icu already does this. I didn't managed to find it though. 

 

https://www.cyclingpowerlab.com/monodcriticalpower.aspx

 

Using the above linked site, I entered some of my season PB's. This gave me an AWC (W') of 30,800 J. I might not have the right value so let me know if this is wrong. To your knowledge.

 

Interesting when you stick that value (30,800) into the activity. You think you're going to blow chunks and you see that you're only 1/2 through your store of J. It also gives the approximate CP below which level I'd recover or above which I'd use Joules.

 

My gut tells me this value is too high for me but I have no other way of obtaining my W'.

 

[davidtinker]

I didn't implement copying W' over existing activities without it. I was a bit worried about people not really knowing what it is, putting in a random value. With FTP most people know what that is about. But maybe I should make that change. Will do tonight.

 

I am going to add spreadsheet style editing of FTP and W' for activities in bulk soon for fixing up history.

 

Thanks David.

 

One thing I've picked up. I added my approximate J level in the settings section. When I visit activities after adding the value to the settings page, I have blanks. I then need to add "J" value for each activity. It's not being carried through from the settings page.

[RossW]

I didn't implement copying W' over existing activities without it. I was a bit worried about people not really knowing what it is, putting in a random value. With FTP most people know what that is about. But maybe I should make that change. Will do tonight.

 

I am going to add spreadsheet style editing of FTP and W' for activities in bulk soon for fixing up history.

I'm quite happy with entering the W' for each activity. My question was born more from a point of a potential bug than something I must have.

[davidtinker]

That site is using Monod & Scherrer's 2 parameter critical power model which is also supported in Intervals.icu. You can select that model using the options drop down on the power page. However I find that the default model (Morton's 3 parameter) usually gets better results. If you enable the "Power Curves" checkbox you can see what the model looks like.

 

I am not sure why nothing is showing up for the 42d curve for you. I will have a look tonight.

 

I agree that 33k is likely way too high. Most people are in the 20's. I have read that you need to do the max efforts (5s, 3m and say 12m) within a week or so and they all really need to be proper all-out to get good data from these models.

 

 

Further to the W' function.

It got me thinking, "What is my W'?"

 

I found a site that calculates an AWC (W') using some of your previous tested/personal best interval power averages. Apologies David, if intervals.icu already does this. I didn't managed to find it though. 

[RossW]

That site is using Monod & Scherrer's 2 parameter critical power model which is also supported in Intervals.icu. You can select that model using the options drop down on the power page. However I find that the default model (Morton's 3 parameter) usually gets better results. If you enable the "Power Curves" checkbox you can see what the model looks like.

 

I am not sure why nothing is showing up for the 42d curve for you. I will have a look tonight.

 

I agree that 33k is likely way too high. Most people are in the 20's. I have read that you need to do the max efforts (5s, 3m and say 12m) within a week or so and they all really need to be proper all-out to get good data from these models.

I can see a 42d curve on my side. I notice now that there is a W' value in the "This season" row of W' 38,692 J. Is this being calculated by the models? 

I think I'll start my W' at about 20,000 and see how things pan out.

[davidtinker]

Intervals.icu now supports showing your activities in a list or table instead of the default calendar. You can edit the FTP, weight and W' fields for each activity on the table. Useful for bulk fixing up old activities and so on.

 

@Rossw: Yes the W' value displayed on that chart is calculated and one of the inputs to the power model.

[davidtinker]

I have just added support for editing training load (TSS), both for an individual activity and on the activity spreadsheet view. Intervals.icu automatically calculates training load for rides with power and for activities with heart rate given some prior power rides to build a model from. However if you have none of that or half a power file or something you can now fill in your own estimate.

[Andrew_Smith]

Love this feature! Always happy if I receive this in my mail.

 

Finally got my 4W/kg target, I am very happy. Now to improve it going forward. 

Thank you David for your wonderful craftsmanship with the website. Makes my training so much easier to keep track of fitness, to avoid overtraining and to see how you progress.

Keep up the hard work as always! 

[nagnew]

Hi David

 

Once again no criticism, just comments:

 

The algorithm does not work very well for sub-FTP intervals, i.e. longer stretches of increased power. 

 

In the example below, I did a 38 minute block of pretty hard work, where my avg power was in excess of ~250W (to me this is Zone 3B or SS).  This below pic shows what it looks like in intervals.icu.  It says recovery for efforts that were full on Z3B intervals.  For the entire 38 minutes of hard riding, Intervals.icu only gave me credit for 5 X intervals all below 1 minute, where in fact I basically was balls-to-the-wall for 38 minutes.

 

947 intervals.JPG

 

Just an idea, perhaps one can have a slider function to adjust the sensitivity of the inteval intensity.  I.e. if you know you did an long effort where you tried your best to keep constant wattage over longer periods of sub-FTP efforts, but could not keep it perfectly constant due to the terrain, then it removes some of the spikes and bumps and calculates your intervals over longer periods.  If you did short HIT sprints, then you might want to increase the sensitivity?

 

In terms of editing, it works well if you want to edit only one interval, but if you have many in one ride, one would need way of saving your data as you go along.

 

Thanks again for the app

Great app.  I'm a noob but can't figure out the following when I'm doing steady state intervals on a looped course (e.g. for aero testing).  Doing at steady 90% of FTP for 5 intervals.  Firstly how do I manually add intervals (laps)?  Using the 'A' key doesn't seem to work.  Secondly adding this functionality would be awesome, for example if user could set a start position in the data file (e.g. after a warm up) and then a lap distance to automatically create laps.

[davidtinker]

Great app.  I'm a noob but can't figure out the following when I'm doing steady state intervals on a looped course (e.g. for aero testing).  Doing at steady 90% of FTP for 5 intervals.  Firstly how do I manually add intervals (laps)?  Using the 'A' key doesn't seem to work.  Secondly adding this functionality would be awesome, for example if user could set a start position in the data file (e.g. after a warm up) and then a lap distance to automatically create laps.

 

Tx. The 'A' key should work. I don't see any errors related to that in the logs. You can also click the "Add interval" button. It should add a short interval at the marker position, then you can drag the edges to resize it. If you drag one edge over the other it will be deleted. What Browser and OS are you using?

 

I could add an option to add intervals to match laps recorded using the lap button for your use-case?

 

Do you mind PMing me a link to the activity so I can have a look?

[RossW]

Tx. The 'A' key should work. I don't see any errors related to that in the logs. You can also click the "Add interval" button. It should add a short interval at the marker position, then you can drag the edges to resize it. If you drag one edge over the other it will be deleted. What Browser and OS are you using?

 

I could add an option to add intervals to match laps recorded using the lap button for your use-case?

 

Do you mind PMing me a link to the activity so I can have a look?

I’ve had a problem crop up at times with the addition of an interval. I’m using Chrome.

 

You press A and then the interval flashes up for a second and then vanishes. You have to move the cursor around and try multiple times. When it does insert it, in the process of resizing and without dragging edges over one another, the interval will vanish again.