HR increases

daveryanwyoming

I'm holding off a bit just to see how the transition goes but I worked with an athlete last night that upgraded and it does have a few very nice features. HR decoupling isn't one of them but the summary stats chart on the Athlete's home page is very nice as it gives you a very quick summary of pertinent training stats for recent rides in one convenient place. I also like the new ability to filter individual data series in each chart by sports. So you could have a chart that shows all sports but an individual data series(like best 20 minute power) within that chart that only includes bike workouts. I like that feature a lot as I cross train quite a bit in the winter with XC ski skating and other activities. Right now I have a weekly hours chart for all activities and another for only bike rides. Those could appear as two data series on the same chart in the new SW.

Discussions on the wattage lists have really convinced me that the HR decoupling feature isn't that useful. Friel only advocates it for isopower rides at Aet or ~55-70% of FTP. That's what he says in his CyclingPeaks article and what he confirmed via email to a wattage list member. How many isopower L2 rides do you do? If I ride L2 it's going to be a longer ride with climbs, descents, headwinds and tailwinds and power will be all over the map. If I do isopower rides they're going to tend to be Tempo or above. Unless someone can find a way to use this new metric for variable power rides at higher intensities then I think it's value will be limited.

Still the new software has some nice features and the price is right

-Dave