Power Curves and Profiles

Stride shows your power across durations in two ways: the Power Curve and the Power Profile. Both are dashboard widgets (the Cycling preset includes them) and both are in the Charts tab of the iPhone and Android apps. They are built from your rides.

The Power Curve#

The Power Curve shows your best power at every duration, from short sprints to long endurance efforts. For each duration (5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes and so on) it shows the highest average power you produced on any ride in the selected range.

Hover over any point to see the power, the duration and the ride it came from. Durations are measured against the clock, so if you stopped at a junction or paused your recording, the time stopped counts as zero rather than joining the efforts either side. Rides marked with Mark suspicious power are left out.

Comparing time periods#

If you have set a comparison range with the date range picker, a second curve is drawn. You might see higher power at short durations but lower power at longer ones than last year, which shows a shift in your training.

Durability#

Your best power when fresh is only part of the story. The Power Curve can also show what you produced after a set amount of work, measured in kilojoules per kilogram. Choose a Fatigue after amount to compare those efforts with your Fresh curve. A fade of 5 to 20% is normal. A small fade suggests good durability, but only if the ride included a deliberately hard effort late on. The same option is on an activity's Curves tab.

The Power Profile#

The Power Profile is a radar (spider) chart that plots your best power at key durations (5 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 1 hour) in watts per kilogram. If you have no hour-long effort in the range, the hour point uses your FTP.

On the web dashboard you choose who you are compared with, using the picker in the widget's title bar:

• Men or Women in one 10-year age group, from 20 to 29 up to 70 to 79. Stride starts on your own group when your profile has your sex and date of birth, or on the World Tour riders of your sex when it has no date of birth. The figures come from a year of rides by a large group of riders training indoors with power meters: the bottom 10%, the average rider and the top 10% at 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 20 minutes. Durations in between are estimated from those, and the hour is taken as 95% of the 20 minutes. Your value at each duration is shown as a share of the group, such as "Top 18%".
• World Tour: professional men or women. The men's figures come from a published study of 144 professional riders, most of them on WorldTour teams, and the women's from a study of 44 professional riders. Both used each rider's best efforts from 5 seconds to an hour across several seasons of training and racing.

Either way, the bands are shaded behind your values, from Bottom 10% up to Top 10% of the group, so you can see at a glance where your strengths lie, and a dotted line marks the group's average rider. These are a general sense of where you stand, not a ranking.

The widget can be drawn three ways, chosen beside the picker:

• Radar: one spoke per duration. A rounder shape is a more even rider.
• Ladder: one row per duration, with your best marked on that duration's bands.
• Curve: your watts per kilogram against duration, running through the bands.

Beside the chart, a summary lists where you stand at 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 20 minutes, above the legend. Select a row, or hover a duration on the chart, for the watts, the band and how far it is to the next one.

The iPhone and Android apps show the radar against a classic power profile ladder, from Untrained to World Class.

Reading your profile#

The shape of the chart tells you what kind of rider you are:

• Sprinter: higher values on the short side (5s, 15s, 30s) than the long side (20m, 30m, 1h).
• Time triallist: higher values on the long side than the short side.
• All-rounder: a fairly even shape across all durations.

Like the Power Curve, the Power Profile supports comparison ranges, drawn as a dashed line.

Heart Rate Curve#

The Heart Rate Curve works the same way as the Power Curve but shows your highest sustained heart rate at each duration, built from your rides. It is useful if you ride without a power meter. Each best links to the ride that set it.