Power Profiler for Cycling

Introduction

Multi platform (Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, iPhone etc.) application to determine power profile for road cyclists who use power meter when riding, training or racing. The app uses cycling power profile chart developed by Hunter Allan & Dr. Andrew Coggan for comparison and classification.

Depends on Qt cross-platform application development toolkit.

Power Profiling Chart

Following image shows the power profile chart utilized in profile calculations:

Power Profiling API V1

The following rider properties are needed for power profile calculation:

• gender,
• weight,
• best effort power in watts for following durations:
  • 5 sec (neuromuscular capacity),
  • 1 min (anaerobic capacity),
  • 5 min (maximal aerobic capacity, VO2 max),
  • 60 min (functional threshold power, FTP)

Currently rider properties are given manually via application GUI. In the future it could be possible to import rider properties directly from Strava or some other training log book web service providing API for these parameters.

The calculation results shows the following parameters for each effort:

• category (Untrained, Fair, Moderate, Good, Very Good, Excellent, Exceptional, World Class),
• power as watts per kg,
• position (1-100) within category,
• overall position (1-100) by gender

Following CLI test program output shows profile query and results in JSON format:

./PowerProfiler -gender male -weight 64 -ftp 257 -vo2 304 -ana 539 -nmu 905

{
    "date_time": "16-10-2017 13-25-54",
    "description": "cycling power profile",
    "query": {
        "athlete": {
            "gender": "male",
            "weight": 64.0
        },
        "cycling_power": [
            {
                "effort": "60min Best Power(FTP)",
                "unit": "W",
                "value": 257.0
            },
            {
                "effort": "5min Best Power",
                "unit": "W",
                "value": 304.0
            },
            {
                "effort": "1min Best Power",
                "unit": "W",
                "value": 539.0
            },
            {
                "effort": "5sec Best Power",
                "unit": "W",
                "value": 905.0
            }
        ]
    },
    "result": {
        "categories": {
            "1": "Untrained",
            "2": "Fair",
            "3": "Moderate",
            "4": "Good",
            "5": "Very Good",
            "6": "Excellent",
            "7": "Exceptional",
            "8": "World Class Professional"
        },
        "cycling_profile": [
            {
                "category": "Good",
                "effort": "60min Best Power(FTP)",
                "power_unit": "W/kg",
                "power_value": 4.02,
                "ranking_category": {
                    "position": 23,
                    "range": [
                        3.47,
                        4.18
                    ]
                },
                "ranking_gender": {
                    "position": 52,
                    "range": [
                        1.86,
                        6.4
                    ]
                },
                "target": "no"
            },
            {
                "category": "Good",
                "effort": "5min Best Power",
                "power_unit": "W/kg",
                "power_value": 4.75,
                "ranking_category": {
                    "position": 31,
                    "range": [
                        4.19,
                        5.01
                    ]
                },
                "ranking_gender": {
                    "position": 54,
                    "range": [
                        2.33,
                        7.6
                    ]
                },
                "target": "no"
            },
            {
                "category": "Good",
                "effort": "1min Best Power",
                "power_unit": "W/kg",
                "power_value": 8.42,
                "ranking_category": {
                    "position": 22,
                    "range": [
                        7.71,
                        8.63
                    ]
                },
                "ranking_gender": {
                    "position": 52,
                    "range": [
                        5.64,
                        11.5
                    ]
                },
                "target": "no"
            },
            {
                "category": "Moderate",
                "effort": "5sec Best Power",
                "power_unit": "W/kg",
                "power_value": 14.14,
                "ranking_category": {
                    "position": 67,
                    "range": [
                        13.44,
                        15.61
                    ]
                },
                "ranking_gender": {
                    "position": 71,
                    "range": [
                        10.17,
                        24.04
                    ]
                },
                "target": "no"
            }
        ],
        "status": 0
    }
}

User Interface

GUI is under development. Following image shows first prototypes of rider property and power profile view pages:

License

Copyright © Markku Pulkkinen. Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0.