KOM Informatics: Precision Workload Tracking

Almost all published cycling training advice suggests that a blend of training, moderate, heavy, and severe is necessary to produce the performance abilities required to succeed at competitive cycling. For a variety of reasons an optimal blend is not so easy to attain. One of these reasons is that sometimes it's hard to know exactly what's being accomplished on a ride, particularly in terms of tracking efforts in the heavy and severe domains. Training Zone distributions get part of the way there. They may tell us that a cyclist spent 6:00 minutes in a particular zone, but they don't tell us whether the efforts occurred a few seconds at a time, or 30 seconds at a time which is much more meaningful.

Now, with KOM Informatics Interval Zone Distributions Intervals get aggregated right down to duration seconds and kilojoules, not only on structured trainer rides but also for random town line sprints and group ride KOM attacks. The end results of this precision tracking of workloads gives a cyclist a true picture of what's being accomplished in training on a day to day basis.

This knowledge can trigger adjustments to an ongoing training plan. For example if a Wednesday group ride turns into a hammerfest with 8 or 10 sprints it might not make a lot of sense to do a structured sprint workout on Thursday. Those sprints are going to show up as intervals no matter what the intent was when the ride started.

Precision workload tracking provides more then just decision support for nudging a training plan during the week, it can also provide high level guidance planning longer blocks of work. Using the 6 Week Period Comparison report available from the Race Readiness Graph a cyclist can compare current fitness with fitness from a prior block of training which produced a good result like a race podium or 20 minute power PR. Current training strategy would then address the deficiencies of the current block vs the prior block. Over time this strategy if implemented successfully will lead to a cyclist near duplicating the workload of the successful block. My experience has been that prior/current performance in all of the PR categories has been within a few watts training this way. Enhanced knowledge through KOM Informatics' precision workload tracking can lead to optimized training decisions which over the course of a season can turn into impressive gains!