Lots of announcements today of new stuff from TomTom. Let’s start with the SPARK 3 / RUNNER 3.
The previous version in the UK was the similarly-looking RUNNER 2 which itself followed the UK’s original RUNNER product. The RUNNER 2 was released in the US as the SPARK (Sept 2015). To cut a long story short, there is no SPARK 2 just a SPARK 3.
The SPARK3 / RUNNER 3 remain watches for serious runners.
The RUNNER2/SPARK was highly successful and I would argue was a key reason why TomTom quickly grew its MySports user base beyond a million users. Expect more growth with the improved v3 product. Here’s why:
Latest v3 advertised features-
Route exploration (GPX upload+follow and breadcrumb modes)
Compass
Customizable straps (thinner than current/V2, better for 247 wearability)
Sleep tracking
Built-in music player (still a rare feature in the market)
Built-in cardio sensor (optical HR – TomTom have a sound oHRM)
GPS tracking
24/7 activity tracking
Multisport mode
3 weeks of activity tracking
11 hours of GPS tracking
Water resistant (40m/130FT)
Interval training
Race mode
The feature set marks an incremental and creditable upgrade from the v2 product BUT also with a whole new set of ROUTING/EXPLORATION functionality. Whilst the new product is similar-looking to the v2 there are further options to customise the appearance with alternative, thinner straps.
FIRST THOUGHTS
I’ve not seen the device yet close-up. It looks to build hardware and features around what runners are looking for. So: it builds multi-sports around what a runner might want; it builds activity tracking around what a runner might want; it builds music around what a runner might want; and it builds routing/exploration around what a runner might want. It’s called the RUNNER3 because it is a watch designed for runners in every respect.
So you won’t get power meter support (you will get speed/cadence), you won’t get a true triathlon-mode (you will get successive multisport modes), and you won’t get turn-by-turn navigation.
The price points are competitive mainly because, for the full feature set, there is no other product that can do the same for the same price! It’s a unique product.
There will likely be many variants to exclude certain features such as music, headphones &/or optical HR as well as options for different band/wrist sizes.
More to follow.
Please help support this site in your next purchase by using one of these sites – always links to their normal low-priced deals.
A couple of days ago I got a press release from the STRYD company who are releasing a new Stryd device (officially announced today 24Aug).
Rather than the original HRM version (STRYD Pioneer) this one is a tiny wearable power meter that clips on your shoe and introduces some new efficiency/form metrics which, possibly, might be able to pinpoint specific weaknesses in your run technique (read below)
I don’t know much more about it than that. I guess it will do footpod-esque things like cadence and be a source for footpod derived pace.
OPINION: a LOT of improvements have been continually made to the original product. I confess to not be fully up to speed with them all. But I do know that there is now a Connect IQ app (NOT data field) from Garmin that writes power data directly into the FIT device (similar to muscle oxygen data from BSX/MOXY via the MOXY data field) and I do know that the new Suunto Spartan ULTRA (as well as the AMBIT3) already have built in ‘proper’ support for running power. Wind is still not taken into account, STRYD claim a minimal effect from ‘normal’ wind strengths.
A great thing with the original STRYD HRM was that it was dual-band. So if you occasionally run with two watches (me, sigh, sad) then this can make it easier to adopt into your current gadget regime. Much easier. It has also introduced HRV support since my review too.
One thing that lacks is the writing of the Running Dynamics datato a Garmin FIT file – but that is a peripheral need at best. STRYD’s ‘Power Centre’ dashboard is pretty good on the whole (avoid IE) and shows that info anyway but I suspect most people want a simple device that just pipes in correct power (cadence) data to a Garmin/Polar/TomTom/Suunto watch. On the whole STRYD does that.
HOWEVER the manufacturers seem to be claiming to be able to measure new running form metrics (below) such as LEG SPRING STIFFNESS. *IF* much more biomechanical information can be CORRECTLY obtained from what seems to be a relatively simple device then this COULD revolutionise ‘run-technique coaching for the masses’. Let’s face it: the existing ground contact time, vertical oscillation and related metrics do not add THAT much to the coaching mix.
Having a new shoe-based STRYD could well be a good idea. Let’s see the price point (US$200) AND if it delivers anything new to the mix.
Summary: Cool!
—- Press Release follows in full —————
August 24, Rio: Stryd to announce performance-enhancing power meter used by Olympic athletes to run more efficiently
Exercise physiology research demonstrates that running 10% more efficiently (economically) can cut 5k time by almost half a minute. Until now, efficiency couldn’t be measured outside the laboratory, so runners trying to improve it were flying blind. Stryd changes this with a tiny wearable power meter that clips on your shoe.
Stryd will be in Rio and learning from Olympic runners and triathletes using Stryd technology to enhance their performance. On August 24 Stryd will announce an unprecedented product that measures the power runners produce and knows how efficiently they use it. It guides runners to personalized performance- enhancing training and form changes.
Here’s how it works. Stryd measures more than twelve metrics quantifying athletic performance, technique, muscle strength and condition, as well as external running environment, and encapsulates these metrics into a single number, power. Power is the key to monitoring training intensity (exertion) and efficiency. Power has given the cyclists who use it a tremendous competitive advantage for years. Now Stryd brings this revolutionary technology to running.
Using power, you can see how efficiently you recycle energy from stride to stride instead of wasting it through poor form. You can pinpoint the biggest opportunities for improving performance. Then training plans prepared by world-class coaches and physiologists guide you through personalized drills and exercises to strengthen your body so you can maintain good form, and Stryd shows you which specific form changes make you more efficient so you can go faster with the same effort.
Going deeper, leg spring stiffness is a measure of efficiency. If you model your legs and body with springs and masses, the mechanical stiffness of the springs determines whether your form and conditioning are wasteful or efficient. You can increase leg spring stiffness with conscious form changes and by conditioning your muscles and tendons to supports good form. Leg spring stiffness has never been available from a wearable during running before. Now it is one of the many metrics Stryd uses as a foundation for power.
I’ve used the HRM-TRI on an off in the pool over the winter and it has been generally VERY good. The only issue really there was the need to do a 5/6m push off rather than anything more strenuous which would cause the strap to move.
Apart from that VERY minor issue I’ve been a happy bunny with my expensive purchase. If I had bought the HRM-SWIM, which would have been the correct ‘pool’ purchase, then I probably would not even have had that problemette.
So moving into the lakes has been good also but with one exception.
Problem:You get all the kit on and the HRM-TRI pairs up. All is good to go. If you splash along to a pre-determined start point WITHOUT starting the session then your watch can go into auto-lock mode.
When that happens you unlock and start the session. OK you might have a few GPS issues at the start but I’m not bothered about those per se.. But the problem I found was that the HRM-TRI would not pair up again as it was under water.
To cut a long story short: no HR data was sync’d at the end of the session using the normal end-of-swim method. I tried many, many times.
Grrr…..
The solution:
On the watch do this
History
Activities
Choose the saved exercise
‘Download HR Data’
This then UPDATES the file from which the HR is missing. ie it does NOT create a new file, it just updates/appends the HR data.
Taking it into sporttracks, it recognises the session already exists and gives the option to add the new HR data from the modified file. Equally you can delete a file and import the whole thing. Presumably this latter method works on Garmin Connect too.
The MOXY Monitor device measures muscle oxygenation through Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (NIRS).
MOXY uses the nature of the reflected light to determine the amount of oxygenated blood. Oxygen in the muscle of an endurance athlete is obviously important.
Although as we shall start to see, muscle oxygenation is more complex than a layman’s understanding of HR.
Unboxing + Contents
You get a nice box like this
Which opens up to give you all the bits below. Essentially it’s the device; a USB dongle; a micro USB cable; and a pack of circular adhesive attachments. I also got a larger strip of Hypafix tape which I don’t think comes with the retail unit.
The USB dongle is required only if you want to record live-streamed MO2 data on a PC using software like Golden Cheetah and Peripedal (trial licence included).
If you want to download the data from the MOXY unit at the end of the exercise then you will use the cable and the free MOxyPC software. MOxyPC is fairly rudimentary software which configures and updates the device. You may well end up using that, like I did.
The MOXY Device
Here’s an end view of the charging port
On the back we have the lights and sensors ALL OF WHICH MUST touch the skin.
And from the top there is an on/off button and two more lights. Above the ‘M’ of the word MOXY there is a small bump which is the ANT+ aerial.
The main function of note for the power button is that quickly pressing it will produce a flash from BOTH LIGHTS. This indicates that the device is on and working – the red light turn on at the rear but you obviously can’t see that. When you are about to start a test it’s not so obvious if the device is on and working as there are no lights on it – if you are receiving data on your watch then obviously it’s fine.
For a further sizing comparison have a look at it compared to the BSX Insight device. they are very similar in size and weight.
Wearing the device
The MOXY can be worn anywhere. Just fasten it in the appropriate area. You’ll use the circular tapes which are surprisingly strong. Firstly you fasten the tape to the MOXY unit after removing the circular strip and then you fasten to your body by removing the entire opposite side of the rectangular tape patch.
For cycling you will probably be most interested in a place half way between your knee and hip – 1/8th of the way around to the outside of your ‘thigh’.
This position is normally fine for your cycling shorts to easily go over it and further hold it in place whilst also keeping SOME/MOST light OUT. There is also a rubber cup (no image available) that can cover the entire device and keep all the light out. I never had a problem with light without the cup but in a lab the cup would be used for super-accuracy.
I was dubious that this tape would keep the device on but it did. Both for intense intervals and for a 4 hour ride. Every time.
In The Lab
I’m not a sports scientist.
I can certainly envisage various athletes being covered with these devices having different muscle groups on different sides of the body variously analysed. MOXY seems great for this practical purpose.
In My Pain Cave.
Affixing the MOXY unit with the tape is very quick. About the same time it takes to get a calf compression sleeve on. So time getting the kit ready is not a disadvantage. The only disadvantage is ensuring you have a ready supply of the tape.
Although the unit looks a little bulky, it’s fine under your cycling shorts. you don’t feel it at all.
I didn’t try it for running but I would imagine that some additional taping would be required on the ‘calf’ to keep the MOXY in place because of the different nature of the leg movement.
On the road
The issue when field testing is NOT how easy the device attaches but rather how easily the data can be recorded and/or viewed.
As noted earlier, the MOXY unit fully caches your SmO2/ThB data. It can all be downloaded later in FIT format directly from the device. That data can then be combined with your watch data with appropriate software like Golden Cheetah or SportTracks.
However you will most likely want to see the data LIVE on your ANT+ watch/bike ‘head unit’. That pretty much currently limits you to the WAHOO ELEMNT or Garmin Watches that support IQ Connect apps.
The WAHOO ELEMNT records the MO2 data directly onto the FIT file. The ability for an IQ Connect app to directly write to a FIT file is imminent (June 2016 maybe) and is held back by Garmin, not MOXY.
The Garmin IQ connect apps are: (here). These include new data fields to add to your device as well as an app for the run and bike 515 test protocols.
MOXY have many instructional youtube videos: such as this.
Accuracy & Accuracy vs. BSX Insight
Apologies for bringing you here if you wanted this information. I am not in a position to perform detailed scientific tests to compare the two devices or to comment on the accuracy of either device. The respective manufacturers have published numerous data in this area.
I did use the both devices simultaneously. But with the MOXY on my right ‘thigh’ and the BSX on my left ‘calf’ the readings were at verydifferent levels and possibly both right for all I know. They both seemed to trend the same way.
Putting the MOXY to a Useful Purpose – First the 515 Protocol / Test
There are many and varied uses of this data. But first things first we need to do a test.
The test can be done on any muscle group for any endurance sport.
The test is repeated blocks of: 5 minutes effort; 1 minute stationary rest; 5 minutes effort; and 1 minute stationary rest. The two 5 minute efforts are at the same intensity ie it is really a Nx (5151) test. (N is 6 or 7 so it will take at least an hour)
The next block is at a higher level and the test is repeated to exhaustion/failure. Bearing in mind that we are looking at blood flow then, for example, in a cycle test the stationary rest period would have the MOXY unit on the right leg and that right leg would be straight in EACH rest period.
Tests begin at a low level of exertion with NO WARMUP with 3 or 4 blocks below FTP
It was really not clear to me how to determine the required effort levels from the manuals, forums and website. From what I could gather and assuming a nice round FTP of 300w it seemed reasonable to me to work in 10% (30w) increments. Thus the test might comprise
5-1-5-1 @ 180w
5-1-5-1 @ 210w
5-1-5-1 @ 240w
5-1-5-1 @ 270w
5-1-5-1 @ 300w
5-1-5-1 @ 330w (likely failure level)
5-1-5-1 @ 360w (almost certain failure level)
Test Results
I think this is a good test. It’s a little time consuming but it certainly gives the MO readings a chance to settle down at each power level. It’s not as hard as a shorter, traditional ramp test, in my opinion.
In the MOXY test, whilst at a new level, if you are 2 minutes in and struggling then the incentive of another 8 minutes (3+5=8) of significant discomfort is daunting inviting you to stop – so maybe the MOXY test lacks a little there in the sense that a true MAX effort may not be achieved. I don’t think that affected the validity of my results or their interpretation however.
So this data was produced by Andri at MOXY from my MOXY unit fit file (smo2/thb) and my Garmin’s FIT file (HR+power)
From this you can get your MOXY training zones. The interesting thing to me here was that muscle oxygen readings are measurements of something that is actually happening in your body that is relevant to performance. HR and power both have their issues as we know.
One problem is that a SmO2 reading of N% doesn’t necessarily correspond to a Zone per se, at any one instant in time. You’ll see below that 50% could be in any Zone.
Whereas I know that HR=145bpm is Z3 and the same applies for power zones; they have ‘threshold levels’.
For interest I interpolated (?) these Moxy Zones to HR. Giving 3 MOXY HR thresholds of 145bpm, 160bpm and 172bpm. These didn’t correspond to pure LTHR based HR thresholds at all. However those 3 values are plausibly ‘correct’ for how I often feel changes. Many-a-time I have looked down despairingly at my HR when cycling up a hill to see the magic 172bpm. 160 is about my LTHR, probably a tad lower by a beat or two.
I once wanted to do Geography at University so that admission in itself makes me unqualified to interpret further. (I didn’t do Geography) – so here’s what Andri said annotated on the chart.
I think that means that at the lower effort levels I am not getting enough oxygen in the blood ie the red line is too low for too long at the start.
At the harder levels look at the trending upwards red line. Yeah! look at me I’m making lots of oxygen. It’s a short lived excitement of course as Andri pointed out that I should be USING THAT OXYGEN. As you can see from the flat green lines at the higher levels I reached some sort of plateau. I need a bit more muscle NOT a bit more oxygen.
So it’s a few more high intensity intervals for me then?
Yes. I will probably follow that advice.
I was surprised at the advice and would have thought that the low-level aerobic stuff was my weakness as I don’t, conventionally, do enough of that work.
The advice also seems to be to warm up as I seem to take a while to get going. I’d kind of figured that out already but it is nice to have some quantification of that.
A bit more Detail on the advice
Specifically I was recommended to do short high intensity intervals. Something like 10-20s with 40-50s recovery. In the effort periods back off as soon as I hit a low SmO2 and recover to sustainable higher levels. So that’s maybe down to 43% SmO2 and then recover to around 49/50% SmO2. Repeat maybe 8x.
For longer sessions there is more generic advice, “Having high O2 availability also seems to help with endurance development. So during endurance steady state exercise, we recommend cycling with a high, near max, attainable SmO2 and at a performance level where this smO2 can be maintained in a relative plateau.” So I’d probably start in Z2/3 power try to maintain 50%SmO2. Try to get that sustainably lower (48%??) by trial and error and then aim for that level normally in longer sessions. As the longer sessions progress it would be likely that I would drop my power level to maintain the SmO2 target.
Summary
The device is MUCH more easily worn than it looks for cycling, providing you have the tape with the circular hole.
The ability to have many devices seems to favour the highly professional university/team environment.
As a retail user I don’t use devices repeatedly that require data to be merged. I want it all in one file. Like most of you I haven’t got the time, other than occasionally out of interest.
Whilst MOXY/peripedal and other bits of software can achieve that in the lab. On the road the device manufacturers let us down.
Getting and merging the data is much harder than it should be. Garmin are about to remedy this so someone like me can use a MOXY on the road. I suspect other manufacturers are following suit but do not know for sure.
Understanding the data and interpreting it is not straightforward. Many coaches would not be familiar with it.
The ability to almost-MEASURE limiters is highly insightful and recommended for everyone.
Disclaimer: This is a loan unit from MOXY. I don’t get any commission from MOXY. This article is simply my experience with the unit over a few weeks. I am not a sports scientist with a PHD in NIRS.
Having not cycled for a couple of weeks I was getting withdrawal symptoms and I also had a new toy to play with. Well I’ve had it for a few weeks. Some form of exercise was probably also de rigeur (what’s the English for that?) for getting rid of my marathon legs.
It’s the MOXY Muscle Oxygen (MO) Monitor. A professional little unit that I strapped onto my thigh with WAY too much tape and endeavoured to link to various bits of software.
My data-goal is always to get data into the desktop version of sporttracks as that is where I keep my ‘special’ personal data. All the other stuff on the net connect/flow/movescount etc can very well be ‘corrupted’ with various duplicate records and the like. Also sporttracks is fairly open and so stuff should reasonably be expected to be able to be gotten into it. Also sporttracks often lets me overlay multiple sessions on one graph.
I also had a play with PERIPEDAL software and with Golden Cheetah for this same session. But the easiest way of getting the MO data into sporttracks seemed to be via a direct FIT download from the MOXY unit via USB and merging with the non-MO data on my Garmin once into ST.
That’s actually relatively straightforward but, in reality, I should have been able to create a complete single file from either Peripedal or Golden Cheetah. Neither quite worked although that was probably my ignorance and lack of perseverance. Next time I shall try harder.
My session was 30 secs at threshold and 15 secs easy, repeated until I got bored. Don’t know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I’d never tried it before. A moderate intensity version of a HIIT session. Actually quite interesting to do as it produced quite good power figures for a relatively low HR effort.
I think I may have discovered the ultimate sweetspot session.
As to the SmO2/THb data – well, I’ll hold fire on my opinion of that.
I reached the boredom point after about 30 minutes but felt like I could have plodded on for well over another 30 minutes. Anyway I’m peaking my legs’ interest for a nasty little MOXY 5-1-5 cycling test later in the week. Actually I did one before and it was much harder than I expected.
My official Half Marathon plan, in preparation for Run Hackney, for this weekend says:
Saturday: 45 minutes easy
Sunday: 90 minutes easy
If you do triathlon you will realise this is a great weekend. Of course as a triathlete you are highly educated in all matters of sports science and have read widely. You are finely tuned to the needs and abilities of your body. Your wife no longer shakes her head when she looks at your stomach…at least not until its covered in lycra.
So when you see your plan says two days of easy stuff what you read is something like this:
Saturday: (Aquathlon prep for dodgy knee backup)
50-70 minutes early morning swim incorporating 5×10 @threshold (optional large paddles+pull) straight into
45 minutes easy RUN
Sunday: Brick.
Bike 90 minutes easy followed by bike 20-30 minutes @85%FTP, high cadence in race position, where possible, straight into
90 minutes easy RUN.
Clearly I have followed the original ‘generic’ plan with a degree of personalisation.
2016 should be an interesting year for the adoption of HRV.
Many of you are probably already familiar with some of the advanced HR analyses that can be performed with HRV. Hopefully some of you have benefitted from these and related features.
I have mentioned and discussed HRV for well over two years (others for much longer) and the chatter & understanding on the forums has increased too at the same time.
But what’s surprised me is the relative lack of adoption by the sports-data analysis platforms. Currently you only get the in-depth analysisfrom ithlete/BIOFORCE HRV, Elite HRV, EMFIT QS and some others – ie the from the relatively small app-based players.
Sure you can see some of the more important measures (like RMSSD, pnn50, LF/HF ratio, SD1 or SD2**) in sporttracks desktop, or EPOC on Movescount and the recovery time HRV data is displayed on Garmin Connect and Polar Flow. But typically the bigger players just show a few bits of data and NOT analysis. There’s a number..but so what? Where’s the insight and actionability?
elite hrv – actionable stuff, as shown
Finally things seem to be moving.
Elite HRV seem to have based their business model on a great, free app BUT a paid-for team/coaching product. Nice to have your team/squad’s data summarised on a dashboard. So there’s clearly a benefit and opportunity in similar areas for others.
BioForce HRV
Ithlete are probably better known than Elite HRV and have been around for longer. So it was no surprise to see Training Peaksrecently partner with ithlete. Great move for ithlete and their credibility (ithlete and BIOFORCEHRV both come under the HRV Fit Ltd organisation). Great move for TP users.
Of course ithlete also have a similar team dashboard (for Liverpool FC, no less) as well as an impending coach app.
KUBIOS – advanced stuff. A bit over my head.
EMFIT QS also seem to have some sort of partnership with Under Armour (I couldn’t get the app-link to work myself). Under Armour are obviously pretty big in the USA especially with some recent app-acquisitions. EMFIT have a great sleeping/waking HRV concept -worth a look if you don’t know them especially for the more serious athletes amongst you.
Sporttracks have long had plans to integrate HRV on the online (MOBI) version – that will likely happen this year. I have hopes for it on the desktop version of sporttracks – sure there are the fields there for the HRV data already…but no analysis…I think we will have to wait for a plugin for that.
There is/was chatter on the Golden Cheetah forum but I’m not so sure things are moving forwards there…yet.
Anyway just to be clear about what’s needed across a few different segments:
Actionability – simple, high level insights such as traffic lights that are easily actionable/ignorable by the athlete such as train vs. no train.
Team View – Ability of coaches to see all players’ status.
Integration/openness between existing apps and analysis platforms
A one-stop shop – not multiple applications on diverse platforms
ANT+ and BTLE/Bluetooth SMART
** Footnote – Source wikipedia:
Time-domain methods
These are based on the beat-to-beat or NN intervals, which are analysed to give variables such as:
SDNN, the standard deviation of NN intervals. Often calculated over a 24-hour period. SDANN, the standard deviation of the average NN intervals calculated over short periods, usually 5 minutes. SDANN is therefore a measure of changes in heart rate due to cycles longer than 5 minutes. SDNN reflects all the cyclic components responsible for variability in the period of recording, therefore it represents total variability.
RMSSD (“root mean square of successive differences”), the square root of the mean of the squares of the successive differences between adjacent NNs.
SDSD (“standard deviation of successive differences”), the standard deviation of the successive differences between adjacent NNs.
NN50, the number of pairs of successive NNs that differ by more than 50 ms.
pNN50, the proportion of NN50 divided by total number of NNs.
NN20, the number of pairs of successive NNs that differ by more than 20 ms.[22]
pNN20, the proportion of NN20 divided by total number of NNs.
EBC (“estimated breath cycle”), the range (max-min) within a moving window of a given time duration within the study period. The windows can move in a self-overlapping way or be strictly distinct (sequential) windows. EBC is often provided in data acquisition scenarios where HRV feedback in real time is a primary goal. EBC derived from PPG over 10-second and 16-second sequential and overlapping windows has been shown to correlate highly with SDNN.[23]
I started off a couple of years ago with the intention to record ‘every heartbeat’ that I do in exercise. Not because I like collecting things but rather to get a more holistic view of the Training Load (TL) of my triathlon efforts. With a better view of my training load I could, for example, better plan to rest and/or train harder.
I naively imagined it would be straightforward.
It’s not been easy. Indeed it’s become the much-fabled “Quest for Wet HRV”.
BACK STORY
As time progressed it transpired that some form of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) would be a further valuable insight into the area of post-exercise recovery and adaptation. So my intention became, instead, a quest to record every triathlon-based RR ‘beat’ – RR ‘beats’ are what are used for HRV.
Again, not rocket science. Garmin’s original 19th Century hard plastic chest strap is certainly waterproof and fully able to transmit RR beats.
Because of all this ‘5krunner stuff’ that I do, it only seemed fair to try to achieve this on all major hardware platforms ie Suunto, Garmin and Polar.
A further constraint is my belief in the data openness that will enable us all to review and analyse our training data wherever we want. So, whilst I can’t test every 3rd party data/analysis platform, I thought it would be reasonable to be able to ‘do it’ in SportTracks – it’s a fairly open piece of software and cheaper than a similarish TrainingPeaks package and also has a rather nice implementation of Training Load.
Yet another constraint is to get data into the COACH function of Firstbeat’s ATHLETE software for RR/HRV (discontinued but working software) as this software has a nice feature that dynamically suggests the intensity/duration of your next session.
As you can see, an initially straightforward task morphed into something a little more complex but by no means unreasonable.
Anyway back to the reality of February 2016.
Cycling & Running
Many chest straps are capable of recording RR beats when out of water. Polar, Garmin and Suunto all come up trumps there. We don’t really have to say much more than that. If you run, cycle or do duathlons you don’t really have much to worry about.
In my case sporttracks imports all their files and Firstbeat Athlete links directly to Suunto Movescount as well as importing Polar’s HRM and Garmin FIT files.
a. Suunto:with Suunto’s underwater, caching Memory Belt on the AMBIT3 everything I dreamed of is possible. Indeed way back in 2015 and probably 2014 it was also possible.
Day 2: Power vs Pace
Sporttracks accepts their sml files and Firstbeat ATHLETE connects automatically with Suunto MOVESCOUNT and/or can directly import Suunto files such as SDF.
The Suunto MOVESCOUNT environment also mostly does what I would want it to in the context of this article around HR/HRV analysis of fatigue.
Garmin’s late-2015 HRM-TRI and HRM-SWIM are caching HR straps and these promised a solution. However they do not (Feb 2016) follow a published ANT+ standard and so are not properly open to ATHLETE and FIRSTBEAT (and others). Sigh.
Of course the non-standard FIT files from the HRM-TRI are not compatible with FIRSTBEAT ATHLETE. Of course that software is no longer supported and hence no longer developed and so will not be modified😦
There are over 1000 posts on this blog and I don’t think any swear word is in any of them. Until now….””$”$%^£%&%^*^&((.
So after two years I have completed my quest for the Holy Grail of Wet HRV.
Half Time Summary
So now I can do what I originally intended to.
Of course part-way through the quest I realised it was flawed. Here’s why
Female triathletes will be super happy with costumes that cover straps. But male pants-only triathletes won’t want to look like an idiot and wear a HR strap in a pool. No HR data. Or you could wear a wetsuit and look equally as ridiculous. There is no wrist-based HRV alternative **YET** (the quest continues).
Firstbeat ATHLETE has no concept of different zones per sport. I’m not exactly sure how their TRAINING COACH function works but, in part, it looks at the TRAINING EFFECT of time in zone. so it underestimates swim efforts and also cycling ones albeit to a lesser degree (for me).
It is possible to change the HRmax for each session manually in ATHLETE (that is the ‘solution’ – ie make HRmax SWIM lower)
Even if proper zones can be determined (as with SportTracks) then who is to say how much the training load of one sport impacts on the fatigue state of another sport? Will a TE4 swim one day prevent me from executing a TE 4 run the next? In my case it wouldn’t. But the stats disagree at that level of granularity. Sigh.
Even if all the TRAINING LOAD stuff were correct then will I be able to execute a TE4.2 bike today? (I am about to). The stats say yes. However if I only got 2 hours sleep last night then reality may say otherwise.
I have 3 further LONGTERM distractions on this quest which I don’t think can be properly met yet:
To record every step – In Douglas Adams’s style I’ve decided this is ‘mostly pointless’ for anyone vaguely sporty, although I would still like to do it if I could find an activity tracker that I would not be embarrassed to wear. Polar A360 looks promising.
To record every beat/RR-beat whilst sleeping – this is probably a questette too far. Essentially though it is a good one as a good night’s sleep is probably the best recovery any of us can undertake. Measuring and analysing that could give us more insight on how ready to train we are the following day. However this needs a good bit of wrist hardware and decent analytical software. I can’t see that happening in 2016 (EDIT: wrong…QS EMFIT does the job!).
Have a single, aesthetically pleasing wrist-based device that can do all the above, probably using optical Heart Rate Technology.
The single, open, beautiful, wrist-based solution is just pie-in-the-sky and I’m not holding my breath.
If you found any of this info or info on the site useful please make your next purchase through one of these links…standard prices. It helps support my efforts.
W’bal is perhaps less important to triathletes than other cyclists but here you are reading about it; so let’s go and find out why W’bal might start to appear on your Wahoo ELEMNT or Garmin Edge 820 in 2016/7.
First off, W’ is pronounced “double-you-prime”.
W’ bal (balance) can be seen as the amount of oomph left in your body. See it as your reserve of ANAEROBIC Watts
W’bal also known as the Anaerobic Work Capacity – ie how much anaerobic work your body is able to put in at any given time during the ride.
You obviously CAN crank out higher watts than your FTP at any given time over a 60 minute CP60/FTP test but when you do that you are eating into your finite stores of W’; and there is always a payback.
Similarly when you slack off slightly you replenish your W’ stores and you will likely replenish them at your own rate (your ‘tau’). W’bal is the balance for you of “how much W’ you have left”.
As I said, in layman’s terms, it’s how much ‘oomph’ is left right now.
When you’re road bike racing, a W’bal metric is a good thing to know (well it would be if you had it on your cycling computer). It’s less good to know in a triathlon race where you almost always want to maintain a constant optimum power output below FTP (draft-legal changes this to a degree) but W’ is of obvious use for ‘proper’ cycle races eg for hills or sprints where race tactics dictate going above your FTP from time-to-time.
I suppose, too, that if your training plan specified some form of interval repeat to ‘exhaustion’ then W’bal is an OK way to see if you reallyhave done it to exhaustion. Of course you might not like your coach to have stats that show that you are an occasional slacker😉
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Taking the above example from a Golden Cheetah analysis, I think it is a set of 5 minute intervals executed at something like FTP+15%. The yellow is the pure WATTS. The Red line is the W’bal. So this looks like a perfectly executed session then with consistent efforts and similarly depleted levels of W’bal??No, probably not. The session looks too easy for the athlete. W’bal is only going down to 15 whereas this athlete often gets down to well below 10.0. Either she didn’t hit the specified watts or the specified watts were too low (maybe an out-of-date FTP?).
Imagine you are a coach and you’ve asked your newest athlete to go flat out for 30 minutes (CP30 test). The athlete is new to training with power and has already noted her concern to you that her left:right power balance seems ‘out’. What do her test results show? (again the chart is from the free and awesome Golden Cheetah software)
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The (manual) dotted, yellow horizontal line shows the FTP derived after the test.
Starting off with the power balance.
The mid-screen up and down red bars represent %L|R power balance.
So the power balance is quite strange. At low wattages the athlete’s power balance is quite right-focussed (before and after the test). Yet during the test it looks fine. There probably is something ‘wrong’ with her technique that she needs to work on but I would not be as overly concerned as she was as once she gets cracking on the problem seems to go away.
Anyway, back to the CP30 and W’bal
This was the first time she had ever done a CP30 test, although she did have a few weeks of experience using a power meter prior to the test. In terms of pacing the test as a first-timer I reckon she did a brilliant job. It’s a pretty consistent effort. There was clearly more effort at the end, pushing the watts higher but at that point the W’bal starts to fall quite quickly. So although her effort was NOT an optimal 30 minute effort it wasn’t too far off. Aim to average 5/10w higher next time and she’d be close. But this is a usable test to work out training zones IMO. I’d favour the scientific approach of adding on 5w to the FTP as that seems ‘about right’😉
Wahoo, Polar and Wahoo
I don’t recall ever seeing this on a cycling computer (Edit: see below…they NOW exist). IMO it is surely useful. Actually very useful. From what I’ve read some of the computation stuff is a bit CPU-heavy. That may make implementation on a cycling computer too tricky as it will have to simultaneously cope with: the SMS status of your phone; polling for ANT+ sensors; and lots of other relatively useless stuff. Although it would only need to be activated once your power exceeds FTP.
So, if you train with power, would you rather have this or another power-derived measurement of whether you are sitting or standing?
Well. I thought it was interesting🙂
PS: It may well be possible that there is PC/MAC-based software that can display this for indoor sessions. A live session in Golden Cheetah may well do that. I will have to dig further (or let me know). Thank you!
Sources: loads of stuff like this on goldencheetah.org and the maths/stats/science goes back originally to the ’60s; Connect-IQ; Fabrice and Gabriel – thanks all.
Golden Cheetah is a highly detailed (and free) piece of software to analyse your data to the Nth level of detail. Actually, that’s not true. Like all good cycling rules it will analyse it to the N+1th degree – where N is a very large number. ie a lot of analysis (Did I say it was free🙂 )
It probably has too much for most of us to use as our standard tool but it has all that a super-keen data-monger would ever need. Even if it’s not for you to use 100% of the time it would be GREAT to use alongside Garmin Connect or SportTracks for times when you want to analyse YOU a bit more.
One of the most useful analyses is the CP Plot – the Critical Power Plot. Essentially this lumps together ALL your best ever rides over a given time period and shows your all your best performances as a single curve of ‘best watts held for each time duration’. for the statisticians amongst you it is derived from mean-max data from your rides.
Something like these 3 charts for 3 different athletes, in fact.
CHART 1: Golden Cheetah CP Plot Curve Chart
Chart 1: Shows the ‘basic’ chart! so for this athlete
The Z6/Z7 boundary is 309w for 25secs.
If we extended the boundary of those two zones upwards until it met the dotted blue line then we would find that the dotted blue line would predict that she could, in fact, achieve something more like 350w for the same duration.
But JUST for the current session, the horizontalish red line, shows that she was working more in Zones 3 &4 – well at least not in Zones 5 and above.
So what? Well there is a predictive element to all of this. You might know that your favourite hill is 105 seconds long. You could look at the blue line and try to limit your power to the power that the blue line predicts you can hold for 105 seconds or maybe 100 seconds as you’ll be going faster and it won’t take 105 seconds, right? The same would apply on the flat. Set your cycling computer to beep at 406watts (or whatever it is) and off you go. Ideal for you QOM/KOM hunters on STRAVA.
OR
You could look at the gaps between the CP curve and the blue line and train to fill those gaps. Those are power-durations that you don’t train at. It doesn’t say that you SHOULD train at those power-durations but I generally follow the rule that differing stimuli in training are good.
Well that’s the basic version of the chart. Here’s another addition where the current session is looked at in terms of the %age of best
Chart 2: Golden Cheetah CP Plot Curve Chart
Here this athlete achieved about 83% of his best power output for the 10 minute duration and about 80% for his 50 second duration. Perhaps this session was a few 10 minute intervals with some slightly slacked off 1 minute efforts as a teaser?
This final chart shows some more juicy detail. Here the RIDE-CENTILE analysis is turned on. So her 90% of ride-best, 80% of ride best, 70% of ride-best (and so on)power curve are shown as dotted lines. If, for example, you performed a well-executed series of 5 minute intervals at the same power you would expect to see the centiles close together.
Chart 3: Golden Cheetah CP Plot Curve Chart
Chart 3 also has the ‘heat curve’ turned on – the smaller lightly coloured ‘peaky’ curve at the bottom. This shows the number of activities at each power-duration. In this case she has had 7 sessions at the one minute mark. Although these 1 minuters could possibly have been warm up efforts. She only had 2-3 activities between 10 and 20 minute durations, maybe this area could be worked on? Or maybe not as over that same power-duration the actual curve touches the potential max curve.
There’s MUCH more than that on this one chart AND there are lots of other analyses too. Not something you’d look at every day perhaps but certainly very INSIGHTFUL.
Lots of announcements today of new stuff from TomTom. Let’s start with the SPARK 3 / RUNNER 3.
A couple of days ago I got a press release from the STRYD company who are releasing a new Stryd device (officially announced today 24Aug).
The MOXY Monitor device measures muscle oxygenation through Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (NIRS).
Having not cycled for a couple of weeks I was getting withdrawal symptoms and I also had a new toy to play with. Well I’ve had it for a few weeks. Some form of exercise was probably also de rigeur (what’s the English for that?) for getting rid of my marathon legs.
2016 should be an interesting year for the adoption of HRV.
There is/was chatter on the Golden Cheetah forum but I’m not so sure things are moving forwards there…yet.
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