I’m new to indoor cycling, and I am trying to adjust to power and cadence targets in level mode. I’m having a hard time evaluating (while riding) how I’m doing at hitting power targets in the intervals in, for example, Violator. My unsmoothed power fluctuates, and the available 3 second smoothing option in on-screen reporting is not terribly helpful for short intervals.
It seems like the SYSTM app could easily report average power at the end of each sprint interval, and that would make it easier to learn how to pace myself. I currently make sure my instantaneous power is above the requested power is for almost the entire interval, and try to roughly compensate for underpowered moments, but my IFs end up being quite a bit higher than advertised for the workouts.
For Violator I wouldn’t worry about it in the slightest, just hit each and every sprint as hard as you can
Riding level mode does take a bit of practice, your power will fluctuate, as it would on the road. You could use a bike computer with a lap function and display average lap watts. With some practice you’ll get better at keeping around the desired power without needing it. Don’t worry too much about cadence, just get it in the right region, it’s a lot to try and balance resistance, power and cadence in level mode. If a workout really needs a specific cadence you’d be better in level mode (GOAT, Power Station).
IF is based on your FTP. The SYSTM work outs are based on your 4DP, so you can easily end up with numbers that don’t match. Don’t worry about it, but this article should help explain it better.
If you export your workout in to Strava then the intervals show up there as, umm, intervals, and you can see your average power by interval. It’s post factum but might do what you want.
Obviously this isn’t a Strava feature per se - the interval data is coming from Systm, and so is also present in TrainingPeaks or another platform you may care to export to, provided that platform has the intervals integrated.
Note that is not true for all workouts on Systm. For instance I haven’t seen it on Inspiration category but I have seen it in the Sufferest and On Location workouts. I’ happy to be corrected on exactly which do and don’t do this.
EDIT: to add - I’d very much like the interval info to be added in Systm directly. Both in-workout and in the Summary.
+1 on intervals.icu I find it offers me all the info I need to make Training Peaks and Strava premium redundant.
Hey @leebo, if you upload the SYSTM ride to Strava, it takes the ride segments intervals and calls them “laps”. I’m not sure if this is for Premium members or not. I have premium but cancelled it after being told about intervals.icu I agree it would be nice to see that in SYSTM directly. My guess is that over time, SYSTM will be giving us a $hit ton of data for analysis as it seeks to be the one true app, lol!
Edit: sorry @leebo, I just reread your post. Lol! You said it already, smh.
Just tried intervals.icu, and it is pretty useful. Thanks for the pointer, I’ll be using it in the future.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t find the 5-second intervals in my Violator ride from yesterday. I’ll try it with The Shovel later today. The bigger problem is that the feedback isn’t available until the ride is over, and it’s hard to correlate perceived effort with power retrospectively.
I really wouldn’t worry too much on the super short intervals. For those even the recording point, sampling frequency, exactly when you start/finish the interval will matter just as much as the power you are outputting. I’d just smash them, and probably have a look at your power curve after the session.
I do get what you are saying about seeing an average power for the interval in real time though. I’d keep an eye on your 3s averaged power and the average power will look after itself.
When I look at Strava from the last time I did violator, it shows all the intervals as “laps”.
Edit: this doesn’t help you with live avg power though. But, as others have said, for Violator in particular, just smash yourself 64 times and try not to fall off the bike.
