During my recovery ride today I had a ten minute interval called Steady Standard.
What is the purpose of this interval and what data is being gleaned?
How, as a user, can I use this information?
My AI coach, OG, told me this;
The “steady standard” interval is a controlled effort to gauge your recovery by comparing power output and heart rate—your efficiency factor of 1.3 shows you’re doing well.
Can we expand?
I came across this post looking for similar information and am curious to learn more about the Interval in the recovery ride.
I posted something in the general chat as there was a similar question.
Here is a blog series that can describe the intent.
I hope this helps. Basically, the heart can be thought of as a stress sensor.
That is informative and did help! Thanks for sharing.
Next question, does athletica.ai track any of this for me or do I have to do it myself? I’m fairly new to the platform and only have 3 or 4 of these types of rides competed. So far the AI coach hasn’t talked about the 10 minute interval. When I have enough of them will it start saying things like, “over the past 3 months your HR has averaged X on the steady state interval and today, at a comparable average power, it was Y. This indicates you may need more rest blah blah blah …”?
Thanks!
Hey,
At this time, AI coach won’t give you feedback at that detail level so it’s something you have to track. The recovery and overtraining warnings that are currently built-in are the load warnings and the recovery profile.
This can be turned off in settings:
Or you can keep them and use discretion. I choose the later since a higher frequency of specific session will trigger this. Sometimes I add a session: recovery, or go off intended plan (and that is OK sometimes!) Smart coach will get you back on track toward the main goal (A priority race).
Here you can see individual overnight HRV and resting pulse readings by date and the rolling 7-day average. Trends and the shape of the curves hold more value than individual values. I have a goal this year to limit dips during build weeks (with a high amount of VO2 work) and taper weeks where “anticipation” levels increase due to a desire to race. When the trend moves outside of the 7-day average it could mean something of significance on the systemic level. Maybe I am getting sick, overly fatigued, or just have “monkey brain” from driving kids to and from activities while getting screamed at, and want to take a nap in my car.
There is tremendous value in knowing individual values (of power or pace) where the transition from nose to mouth breathing and the ability to talk in full sentences occurs. In the blog post linked, the author speaks about the range of HR which can be quite useful. Also, the cadence or turnover at which those values occur. Say your self-selected cadence is 92 but you have to drop it down to 78 to produce the watts at VT1 and your HR is 10 beats higher. That is a sign you may not want to attempt anything into sub threshold or threshold range. Don’t be fooled though, sometimes we need to use discretion and completing the intervals is a good thing. That is why using your mind is the best way.
I am not sure if you swim, but the sensations of breathing are really hard when swimming. This is why I like to use bilateral breathing. I am probably opening up a big argument here, but I think if you are a multisport athlete, having the ability to breathe on both sides of your stroke is important when swimming steady, steady-moderate. In the example above, if you someone is having trouble at an easy pace of swimming to process oxygen during the warm up with say a 3-5-3 breathing pattern or a 1-3-1 then it’s a sign that maybe something is off.
Anyway, I tried to give useful examples where the standardization test, during a warm-up of a session can be used. When you get to know yourself well, from years of training, or just listening to your body/mind closely, you can tell if you are ready for the rest of the session or weekly workload.
Lastly, I wanted to say that these skills are useful, but when it comes to racing, it’s time to quiet your head and be in zone. For short races I think it’s best not to go by numbers, something I have struggled with for years which leads to underperformance.
This is good stuff! I’ve had a coach in the past and am very comfortable self coaching. Still, this is new to me (this steady state interval in a recovery session). I love adding new tools to the toolbox. And your ideas on how to use it beyond just recovery sessions are helpful too. I’m comfortable listening to my body, especially during race efforts. Still, during training I still struggle to “hear” what it’s saying, especially when it’s telling me I might need to take it easy (there’s a reason we’re constantly worried about over training, right?). This, and some of the recovery profile data you highlighted look like they’ll be useful!
We all still make mistakes during training. However, like @Andrea says, there are guardrails put in place to ensure that you are kept on track, and it sounds like you personally know yourself well - that will indeed provide you with tools to get the most out of your training.
One thing that might help is this podcast I recently listened to. I don’t know if you listen to Fast Talk Labs Podcast (Prof has been a guest many times), but there is an awesome episode on what training does and they provide an analogy of the house vs. the storm. Training is like a storm: small or big. The house is you. There are many bits and details in there but basically, you need to provide a certain amount of stress to signal a change. Sometimes the house needs a significant amount of damage (i.e. roof needs to come off), but never a huge storm where it levels the house, say in January when your key race is in September.
Keep learning about yourself and asking questions about Athletica - we all enjoy meaningful discussions.
If I do some training and I blow the house roof off, I think I’d be a bit concerned! 
