Power meters · Public discussion

Ride Data Visualization

Started by dlinenbe · · Last activity · 9 posts · 1,163 views

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Power meters
Published
19 December 2006
Last activity
20 December 2006
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dlinenbe
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9
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  1. I am looking at interesting ways to analyze, explore and visualize post-ride cycling data.

    Attached is a PDF report of one of my training rides showing some typical (and not so typical) ways of looking at power / heart rate/ cadence / TSS / IF data.

    The cycling peaks software probably does all this stuff interactively, but I see some value in publication quality PDFs that can be shared without anything more than Adobe Acrobat (or Foxit Reader). I also see value in the web distribution model, where people could submit (or store their data in some repository), and could "order" (or share or customize) their own ride reports.

    Also, since I am a programmer, and built the plotting/PDF library up from scratch, I can do whatever I want. (This is an at home project / labor of love for me, so I can see the way my rides are, how _I_ want to see them.)

    I think one of the cooler plots is on page 9, which breaks a ride into 5 minute power zone buckets, and stores the 10 second avg power value in L1-L6. Because there is a wide variation of wattage within each zone, I have lower and upper colors representing zones 2 - 5.

    This file is only for a single ride (which is my focus for now)...
    I'll get to multiple ride comparison stuff later...

    Anyway, if anybody has thoughts or suggestions on some aspect of their cycling ride that they think would be really cool to visualize - in perhaps a unique or interesting sort of way - please describe and I'll consider adding it to the report.

    If anybody has powertap files that they would like to get a report on, just send them to me at [email hidden], and I will send you a PDF report ...

    Ultimately, I'd like to set up a free webserver where one can submit their data, and get a report back automatically - but that will take some time - and I don't know if there would be any interest - especially since everybody probably already has software to monitor their cycling progress...

    dave linenberg
    [email hidden]

  2. dlinenbe said:

    I'd like to set up a free webserver where one can submit their data, and get a report back automatically

    Just an FYI: TrainingPeaks LLC owns the trademarks to the terms (acronyms) normalized power, intensity factor (IF), and training stress score (TSS).

  3. acoggan said:

    Just an FYI: TrainingPeaks LLC owns the trademarks to the terms (acronyms) normalized power, intensity factor (IF), and training stress score (TSS).

    Yeah - I thought that might be an issue - though I have seen a number of spreadsheets circulating around which people have written, for personal use, using these terms.

    I haven't thought any through any of the legalities involved - I've only been focused on data exploration, analysis, and programming aspects. So I don't know if I'm _allowed_ to freely give a ride report like the one attached if somebody wanted one!

    In any case, if anybody has any novel ideas on visualizing ride data for post-ride analysis, I would still be most interested.

    dave

  4. acoggan said:

    Just an FYI: TrainingPeaks LLC owns the trademarks to the terms (acronyms) normalized power, intensity factor (IF), and training stress score (TSS).

    Out of curiousity (and this is totally a curiosity thing, not trying to be a smart-ass or make life difficult for anyone), how does trademarking those terms apply when they, I presume, appeared in some publicly published papers before they were used in Training Peaks software?

    Or am I wrong about the chronology of events or applying patent-style disclosure protection rules to trademarks (which I know very little about)?

    Thanks,

    Berend

  5. If the OP referenced the public document as a source for the term, or in fact noted that the term is owned by someone else, no problem.

    Looking at the way it is discussed here, it is public domain.

  6. i really like the chart on page 9... i'm not sure what cumulative distrobution charts are showing me though can you explain these?

  7. doctorSpoc said:

    i really like the chart on page 9... i'm not sure what cumulative distrobution charts are showing me though can you explain these?

    Sure.

    For a practical example, lets look at the power cumulative distribution chart (page 2). I can look at the chart, pick any percentage on the y-axis (for example, choose 80%) - and see that it corresponds to about 380 watts.

    This tells me that 80% of the ride was done below 380 watts, and a full 20% of the ride was above 380 watts.

    (the information is embedded in the histogram above, but the distribution chart allows us to more easily eye-ball how much riding (% of time) was done above and below a particular value (power, in watts, in this example)....

    If you noted, the little triangles on the X-Axis denote average values...

    Thus, for the power distribution, we see that the triangle is at 320 Watts.
    So, it makes sense that the average intersects with the 50% cum. % of time. Thus, 50% of the ride was above this value, and 50% below.

    Same description applies to cadence, heartrate, and IF.

    dave

  8. dlinenbe said:


    If you noted, the little triangles on the X-Axis denote average values...

    Also, look at the power level distribution on page 8.

    For each Level, one can read the top of the "bin" to see how much time
    one spent there. For example, there was 10 min 37 seconds of L5 time.

    But what about the quality of the L5 data zone. For starters, what was the average wattage within the L5 zone.

    These zones are wide. By looking at the bottom of the chart, I see a little blue triangle for each zone, indicating the average wattage in the zone.

    So, for L5, I see that it is about 390 watts. But more importantly, I note spatially that the average wattage for the zone was pretty close to the L4 border. So, the portion of my L5 riding was really not a solid, strong, L5 ride - but more like just a licking the lower part of the zone.

    dave

  9. dlinenbe said:


    So, for L5, I see that it is about 390 watts.

    Correction - it is a tad more than 340 watts. I inadvertantly read the L6 avg.
    Rest of comments still apply.

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