intervals.icu - most insightful visuals & metrics to track progress

[robeambro]

Hi all,

I've been using intervals.icu for a long time, but mostly to look at how each ride has gone (e.g. did I stay in such and such zone, did I hit a new PR power..), but now I'd like to get better at tracking my progress. And by progress, ideally I don't just mean how my critical power at various time intervals has moved.

For example (and again - only for the sake of providing one example), I've been doing a heck of a lot of base training for many months (for various reasons) which doesn't seem to have had much - if at all - impact on my FTP and I tend to ride the same Z2 power at the same HR, but I can anecdotally see how much more Z2 I can do right now without fatigue (e.g. two days ago I did a 4.5h Z2 ride which would have had me quite taxed otherwise, yet the following day I felt just fine hammering it in a Zwift race. I can anecdotally see similar improvements clearly, but measuring them is another matter).

Other than my example above, those of you who use intervals.icu, can you show me what visuals / charts you use in either the "Fitness" or "Compare" pages to track your performance?

[eins4eins]

Test and compare power data for various durations.
Heart rate drift, heart rate recovery, Heart rate to power, etc can be used to validate aerobic fitness, but its not as easy to use to evaluate performance based on that as several factors play a role.

[Tifosiphil]

Personally I don't find Intervals the best. Although it is very handy it just doesn't correspond efforts across other sports effectively. I run 2/3 times a week alongside cycling and the load you receive is often not comparable for the fatigue.

For example I recently did an 8km run with 1200ft of elevation within 2km. Legs were screaming and I was blowing out my arse with a high HR. A couple of days later I do a 30minute session with 20mins in Z1 and 10mins under and over FTP and get a load 25% higher despite not feeling taxed at all.

The best way to track your performance on Intervals is like above and do the same/similar workouts and compare them. Personally when I'm training heavily over winter I will start each month with a seated 20min ramp test and then 2 weeks later do a session with a 1, 5 and 15 minute effort to compare power output and heart rate

[robeambro]

Personally I don't find Intervals the best.

I'm open to other free/cheap platforms if that helps; just nothing nuts like WKO, I am not prepared to spend that kind of money.