Recording Sessions: Cycling
Recording cycling sessions is largely automatic; what matters is the auto-lap setting, sensor pairing and the correct bike profile with its power meter.
Definition
“Recording sessions: cycling” refers to capturing a ride with a head unit or sports watch including the paired sensors for power, cadence, speed and heart rate. On the bike, recording works almost automatically. What matters most is accounting for the differences between bikes and the accompanying equipment such as power meters.
Why it matters
With a power meter, cycling delivers the most objective load metric of all endurance sports, because watts are independent of wind, gradient and daily form. That objectivity is lost when the wrong bike profile is active, the power meter is not paired or calibrated, or auto lap chops intervals into pieces.
| Setting | Manufacturer default | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Auto lap | Every 5 km | Disable for interval training |
| Recording rate | Often “smart” | Every second |
| Bike profile | One profile for all bikes | One profile per bike and power meter |
| Calibration (zero offset) | Manual | Before every ride, after temperature changes |
Most manufacturers ship an automatic lap every 5 km for cycling. Pressing the lap button then ends the running lap early and starts a new one. With the function disabled, the lap button can be used to record segments manually and evaluate them precisely afterwards.
How obseed measures it
obseed imports the ride recording with every paired sensor channel and carries the laps over as segments. Where power exists, metrics such as Normalized Power, Intensity Factor and Training Stress Score are computed from it; without power, the calculations fall back on heart rate.
Different power meters measure differently. A pedal-based system, a crank-based system and a smart trainer will disagree by several percent on the same ride. obseed therefore recommends training with the same power meter that was used to establish the reference values, or knowing the offset between devices and noting it down. Obvious erroneous values, such as power spikes caused by sensor glitches, can be corrected in obseed so they do not distort the load metrics.
Example
A rider plans 3 × 10 min at threshold with 5 min recovery. Auto lap is active at 5 km on the head unit.
He rides at 270 W and roughly 36 km/h, so the first interval ends after 6 km. The device automatically started a new lap at 5 km; the interval is spread across two laps, the second of which contains 1 km of interval and 4 km of recovery. That lap averages 190 W and says nothing about the threshold work.
With auto lap disabled, he presses the lap button at the start and end of each interval. In obseed, three segments appear at 268 W, 271 W and 265 W with 165, 168 and 171 bpm. The rise in heart rate at equal power only becomes visible through the clean segments and shows that the third repetition was at the edge of fatigue.
Categories
- Trainingsaufzeichnung