Training Software

tawfeeredux

Just wondering what people's views are on the various software options for recording/monitoring training? I've only invested in a garmin recently so only looking at these properly now.

I've seen Golden Cheetah mentioned here a few times & the graphs from the guys in this thread, which I guess are from GC, look cool. I like the idea of pulling up graphs like that to track training volume, etc, & this seems to be something missing from Garmin's own offerings (i guess you can export to CSV & do something that way, but that brings another layer into it). Otherwise I like the look & feel of Garmin Connect - GC is a bit disappointing in comparison - but I wonder is there anything else that's missing from it?
I know there's a few other options out there (is Training Peaks TKO+ worth paying for?), any feedback on what people are using would be good.

chakattack

I use Garmin Connect and Golden Cheetah. Garmin to keep track of hours, mileage, calendar etc. because it's just a simpler layout and Golden Cheetah for power analysis.

Golden Cheetah is good but takes a bit of setting up and playing around. I've gotten bored if it the last few months after one wild power result screwed up my Cp chart, haven't bothered fixing it yet.

I'm not using all the features yet, but have some good ideas following that thread.

WKO is supposed to be pretty good for power analysis but you have to pay for it and I think you can do most of the same or similar things with Golden Cheetah (xpower instead of normalized power).

Looks like everyone is in post season navel gazing mode

Garmin Connect has a workouts feature now which looks handy but otherwise it's not great. I'm sure they'll bring some power based features out soon.

Lumen

I have tried all the paid offerings and prefer GoldenGheetah. I'm not sure how useful it is without a power meter.

Diarmuid

Goldencheetah is great. Gives you a lot of ways at looking at your data. Without a PM it's not as useful but it can still give you your HR/time/distance split over a ride/week/season etc...

Lumen

Another consideration is that the metrics in these software packages depend on having accurate ride data.

That's easy to achieve if all of your rides are continuous efforts with no stopping (i.e. solo training), but if you have a mix of different types (commuting, solo training rides, group training rides, social spins) the whole concept breaks down somewhat.

I'm not sure if it's the fault of Garmin or the metrics (which I assume are derived from nice simple ergo tests in labs), but the amount of ride splitting I have to do to try and tidy up the data is still a problem.

This doesn't matter if you're just analysing power data from specific rides, but for the longer term metrics (e.g. ATL and CTL, or even just hours-per-week) I have found it difficult to prevent garbage-in-garbage-out.

A simple spreadsheet with time, distance and KJ for each ride plus RHR measured once every couple of days might be less frustrating and more useful.

morana

Diarmuid wrote: »

Goldencheetah is great. Gives you a lot of ways at looking at your data. Without a PM it's not as useful but it can still give you your HR/time/distance split over a ride/week/season etc...

I think without Goldencheetah the PM is not as useful!