Athlete¶
Rider¶
Typical rider information. You can upload an avatar by clicking the avatar location on the dialog and selecting a photo. A square photo/avatar will look best as GC will squish rectangular images.
Setting your zones¶
Power Zones and HR Zones are required for GoldenCheetah to post process ride data and compile performance metrics through out the application. You need to make sure you have a critical power value set on a date before any of your data... or GC will not calculate BikeScore or Daniels points needed for the Performance Manager (PM). If you want TRIMP displayed on the Ride Summary or Performance Manager (PM), you'll need to set up the HR zones as well.
The trick is to make sure the "From Date" is set before the dates of the rides you want to analyse... GC does not back calculate the power or heart rate zones. If your "From Date" is today, then the only workouts in your Performance Manager (PM) will be those you did today.
You also can autocalc Critical Power from the Critical Power page with the "Save CP value" button. If there are no saved critical power values already, the save will set a data 1/1/1900, which will be fine.
Power Zones¶
You can autocalc Critical Power from the Critical Power page with the "Save CP value" button. If there are no saved critical power values already, the save will set a data 1/1/1900.
HR Zones¶
This tab allows you to set up your heart rate zones so you can:
- See the amount of time you spent in each zone in the Ride Summary
- Allows you to use TRIMP scores in the Performance Manager (PM)
To use this information effectively, you will first need to know your resting heart rate, your max heart rate, and your lactic threshold. There are a number of ways to determine these values. The most common way to determine your resting heart rate is to measure your heart rate first thing when you wake in the morning. You can measure your heart rate on a few mornings, and take the average. Finding your max heart rate is far more challenging. If you do not already know it, you can Measure your Max Heart Rate. There are also a number of ways to determine your Lactic Threshold.
Once you have established values for these parameters, you can enter them into Golden Cheetah. Golden Cheetah nicely allows you to enter different numbers for different spans of time. This is extremely useful because your numbers WILL change over time, and being able to analyze your data based on the contemporaneous values is essential. It also provides a nice log of changes in your Threshold, Max, and Resting Heart Rates. To enter values, select a "from date," which is the date that those values began, then fill out the next 3 boxes with the appropriate values. Once done, click "Add LT." This will add a line to the table (see my image, there are three lines in the table: Jan 1, May 1, and Aug 1). Once you have completed this, click save.
The next step is to set up your heart rate zones. There are a number of ways to define heart rate zones: Zones can be calculated based on Heart Rate Reserve or Maximum Heart Rate or Other Custom Zones Your zones will depend on which training system you are using. Typically,most people use 5 zones for simplicity, and the Default Heart Rate Zones in Golden Cheetah are pretty standard.
To edit the zones for a given time period, simply click on the date in the upper table (see, I have highlighted May 1 in the image below):
Once you highlight the date, the bottom table populates, and you are able to define the heart rates for each zone. If 5 zones are too few, click the button to the right that says, "Add Zone." Once you do that, you will need to define a heart rate range for that zone. In the "From BPM" column, enter the minimum heart rate for that zone. The maximum heart rate for each zone will be determined by the value in the next row down (or in the case of the last row, it will be determined by your maximum heart rate). The column labeled "Trimp k" defines a factor used in computing your TRIMP Score. TRIMP score is an especially useful stress metric if you are using the Performance Manager (PM), because you might not always have powermeter data available (say you're using running as cross training: running places a stress on your body, but if you don't have any power data, scores like BikeScore and Daniels Points will not be factored into your stress balance.
Default Zones¶
The default Heart Rate Zones are as follows:
0% 0.9
68% 1.1
83% 1.2
94% 2.0
105% 5.0
Performance Manager¶
There are 4 settings for the Performance manager.- Show Stress Balance Today: In earlier releases of Golden Cheetah, the Performance Manager would appear to be 1 day behind. The Performance Manager was not originally intended to show the stress from the same day, but a number of users were confused when day-of workouts did not show in the performance manger. As such, this option was added to make the Performance Manger work better for that group. Checking it will make todays workouts show up in the Performance Manager.
- Starting LTS: LTS is "Long Term Stress." Unless your are just starting a workout program, you will already have some long term stress on your body. This option allows you to enter a numerical value so your Performance Manager does not start from zero. As you start to accumulate workouts in your database, this will become less necessary. If you are just getting started with Golden Cheetah, but you have already been collecting power data for a season, this may not be necessary to fill out.
- STS average (days): STS is "Short Term Stress" This allows you to change the number of days used to calculate your short term stress (like a rolling average).
- LTS average (days): Similar to above, only for Long Term Stress.
