Me again. I’m partway through my test week, and I have some questions/concerns about the calculation of power and heart rate zones for rowing. For context, I am mostly a cyclist but every couple of years I spend the early winter on the rowing machine when I get a bit burnt out on the bike. I only have a few weeks of “rebuilding rowing form” rowing activities coming into this season.
When I first entered critical power, I used a pretty conservative number that I basically just guessed at (I debated for a bit and don’t remember exactly what I ended up using - maybe 110?), thinking Athletica would quickly update it as I did more sessions. Indeed, I quickly got notified that the smart coach wanted me to update my critical power, so I did, but it is very low(86). I have done some max efforts including a 2k test today, after which it suggested increasing my critical power, but still to a very low number (93).
Every workout I do has a much higher load than prescribed as a result of this very low critical power. So far, it hasn’t made a lot of difference to me as I simply row hard or easy as prescribed, but I was hoping for better guidance for interval targets.
Today I found an online critical power calculator for cycling that used 3 max efforts from the last week that gave a critical power number of 136. I have no idea if that is the same calculation as for rowing, but I believe my zones would be much more in line with my ability if my critical power was higher.
Another issue I am having is with heart rate zones. Age based calculations do not work with me as I am 58 years old with a max heart rate well into the 190s (today I saw 199 during my 2k test). I entered a threshold value of 180, but Athletica has changed it to 159, which results in very low values for me. I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t updated based on observed data during this test week.
I like the idea of an adaptive training plan, but I’m concerned that until the training zones are more realistic, there isn’t much more here than with a paper plan.
thank you for your message and it’s an honour to have an athlete like you on the platform. We are sorry to hear you’re not finding the Athletica experience satisfactory. But let me try to explain why you are seeing those numbers.
CP: we do not consider the <2’ efforts in the CP estimations. I’m not sure what on-line tool you adopted for the estimation, but in our experience 1’ efforts are adding too much noise to the profile, and this variability affects CP estimation badly. In your case, unfortunately, Athletica still misses important efforts longer than 10’ to establish your profile. I understand this might be somewhat disappointing, but it’s the most robust approach our experience can suggest. Please be aware that your 1’ effort is taken into account for in the calculation/estimation of the maximal peak power and the maximal aerobic power, which are considered in the estimation of the 6th and 7th zones. From your profile I can see max efforts clearly at 1’, at 5’, and 8’. The lower points for durations longer than 10’ are taking down the CP estimation. If I’m reading correctly, on Saturday 26th you will have a 6k all-out effort prescribed. Athletica will use that effort to complete your profile. We are quite confident that at that point your CP will settle down to the right place. Please get in touch if this does not happen.
HR: again, our robust/conservative approach has to be “blamed” here. I can see that you can hold your HR>180 for more than 10’, and this clearly indicates that threshold HR is up there where you would expect. Unfortunately, during that key session, HR signal was lost for a period just before the 2k all-out bout. In this case Athletica flags the session, and we do not consider the HR reliable. Again, sorry for this, but in our experience this is a robust approach that can give us the best trade-off between good/bad data inclusion/exclusion (there are pros and cons). I know how frustrating can be to loose data in such an important session, and I’m sure you can already take all the precautions by adjusting the chest belt before the start of the training, etc.
Please, let me know if I’m missing something. You might consider reading this blog post, where we discuss a little bit deeper how the thresholds are estimated.
Again, we are super excited to wrap up your test week and see if Athletica profiling can work for you. We are aware that including all the kind of efforts in CP or HR estimation might provide better reactivity, but we also know that we might end up by overestimating thresholds, which can be more harmful than underestimating them.
Thank you so much for looking into this. I do understand that once I have completed my 6k test tomorrow, my profile should be much better.
I wonder if the way that Concept 2 records rest intervals has contributed to the system thinking it dropped the heart rate signal? I had a look at the fit file and noticed that during a rest interval, the cadence is recorded as the last cadence of the work section, no matter the actual cadence. I’m not sure this has any impact. I also noticed that it seems to record heart rate and power correctly if power is not zero, but if power is zero, it doesn’t record anything. On my last activity, I had a 2:30 rest interval programmed immediately prior to the 2000m all out portion. I rowed very lightly for the first 30 seconds, spent most of the rest period stretching and walking around, then started light rowing again a few seconds before the test started.
Tomorrow I will program the workout so that rest periods are just regular intervals to hopefully avoid setting off any flags.
I’ve just noticed something I assume is a bug - maybe for a new thread, but the distance based intervals like my 6k test tomorrow have a very short duration listed in the workout description. My 6000m has 55 seconds and the 2k was 14 seconds. I expect this throws off the prescribed load calculation for the workout.