So… if you find yourself away from the pain cave with nothing but a smartphone, an HR monitor and a random resistance machine, you can still do SUF to HR targets.
However, it takes awhile for HR to react and depending on the activity type and interval type how you actually settle in towards the targets can vary widely. But, for me at least, it tends to be very reproducible for the same activity.
So… if I could just pull up old HR readings as targets for the present ride, maybe smoothed over a 15s or 30s average window for example, I’d know exactly where I should be and would probably end up actually very close to the same power levels.
Call it an idea more than a feature request, but it could be cool. Call it a “replay” option. I can see some real hurdles to implementation, like the fact that historical activities may have rewinds or fast forwards in them. Even pauses aren’t ideal. So maybe not all historical activities are eligible. It also causes problems when the activities are updated significantly, which could be an even bigger headache for supporting such a feature. A simple implementation would be to just run the targets on Open 120 or whatever, or on RGT maybe. Then there’s no problem, but also less fun.
Even for me this doesn’t rise to “Gosh, I really wish this feature existed.” It’s just an idea that would be useful from time to time. It wouldn’t have to be just HR targets. It could be a replay of all actual metrics as targets, could overlap with a feature like replaying outdoor rides as workouts. Could imagine RGT sessions with position-based targets from real rides instead of time-based targets. There are a lot of potential ways to go with these things, but HR replay on basic workouts is what I’ve found as “hey it would be nice to see my old HR values while I do this.”
For the use case you describe, I’d think that riding to RPE would be the “solution”.
I’d guess that some type of historical HR target (assuming you’ve even done the ride before) would require far too much effort/time/coding etc. , not to mention the difference between a Zone 2 target after riding Zone 2 for 20 minutes vs Zone 2 after riding Zone 5 for 5 minutes. Then there’s the fact that HR can vary so much based on one’s state of overall health, whether there’s sufficient cooling (fans), the length of the interval etc etc.
Being able to compare old values vs current ones is something I (and I imagine a lot of others) will do regularly after the fact in some type of post ride review. I’ve never actually thought about it during any given ride, except for maybe FF.
HR is slow to respond, so while it might be useful metric for long efforts at lower intensities it would be useless compared to RPE for any kind of interval based workout.
I don’t have a power meter so all my outdoor rides are to RPE and HR, even a slight rise in the road can have me above Z2 if I’m not super aware of the force I’m putting through the pedals and before I know it my HR is racing away into Z3.
The point is using your actual HR graph from your previous attempt as the new target. Yes, HR is slow ( a little, especially if you’re unfit) to respond, but that old graph has that already built in. If you’re following that, you’re following that. My HR tends to respond very very similarly every time I do the same workout at the same power. RPE varies quite a lot more. Even with something like fast repeated intervals, that’s not actually about sprint power. The HR, and your limit on those efforts, comes from how your heart settles in through repeated efforts, and it still tells you if you’re doing those repeated efforts too hard or not. RPE then is what you use to adjust the next effort. After about 2 efforts, HR will certainly tell me if I’m going harder than normal, especially by looking at the lows. Maybe my HR is way more predictable than most people’s. It’s not going to work for standing starts but it does work even for pain shake style intervals, and certainly for Thin Air or even Power Station.
Anyway, yes, of course for once in awhile I can use RPE, which is why it’s not a critical feature. But RPE isn’t telling me my power, just how I feel.
But what is your HR telling you then? If I see my HR was say, 156 at the midpoint of the first long effort in HHNF, how would seeing that it was 155 the last time I rode it help me? Why would I want to see it? If the use case is solely or even mainly for when I am away from my trainer and all my equipment, I’d see that as an exception (and likely an exception for most people) so I’m not sure what the return on investment would be for the devs to work on this.
That said, like you say, it would be kinda cool to have the option to replay or overlay your prior metrics in real time while you are doing a workout.
Yes, the use case is just when way from a smart trainer. Lots of places have dumb spin bikes and SYSTM works on smart phones. The point is to be able to get a consistent workout at those times. What it’s telling me if I’m on the 3rd rest interval of revolver and my HR is coming down to 135 and on my trainer rides it came down to 145, is that I’m not pushing out the same watts as on the trainer, so I’ll take the next two harder. Actually I would have a good idea by the end of the first interval and recalibrate RPE or possibly resistance on the next one.
Definitely it’s not a high-importance thing though. Just a thought of something that could be a little cool to have. I agree, there could be better things to work on, although as far as I care, there’s not a ton of things to improve.
…on that we will have to disagree ;). I have a pretty long list but, to be perfectly fair, even if none of the things I want are ever implemented, it’s still a better app than literally anything else out there by a country mile.