Two Wheel Blogs

I've been using a powermeter on my bicycle for almost 7 years now. Before that I used a computrainer and the racermate software to track power in workouts. (OK, not really power, because computrainers back then really had no business reporting power output. They could electronically increase and decrease the load, but quantifying that load was anything but accurate.) Anyway, my point is we've come a long way in those 7 years and it's been a great ride so far.

And we still have a good long way to go. We still don't have a great solution to the problem of determining future performance - tomorrow, next week, at the end of the next training cycle - by looking at what we've done in the past.

Some say it's not possible, that the realities of everyday life and training and physiology make the problem too complicated. I'm not ready to believe that. Not yet. Not while we really don't yet have good tools to analyze previous performance.

I've used my SRM's software, Cyclingpeaks WKO, and GoldenCheetah side-by-side-by-side over many seasons. Three apps? Yes, because no one of them does everything I need. One of them, GoldenCheetah, is adding features fast. It may not be long before this one steamrolls the others.

GoldenCheetah, GC, is open source. Anyone can contribute. Contribution has many meanings. In this case it means the GC project accepts new features, bug reports, bug fixes, and feature suggestions from anyone. I can contribute suggestions and bug reports to the other guys too, but only after I pay for the software. GC is free.

Free? Really? And you get a real say in how the application works? Yes, yes, and yes.

Recently I had a problem with some SRM files which weren't importing properly. I described the problem to the development email list, sent them some of the problem files, and in a few hours they squashed that bug.

When I get that kind of service I'm eager to pay it back. That's why I took an hour of my time this morning to mock up the graphic you can see below. I had an idea for how the user interface in GC could be improved. I put my Photoshop skills to work and gave them the benefit of what I hope they'll see as a good idea.

And even if it only spawns a line of thought that leads to an even better user interface idea, at least I can say I did a little something to make a good tool into a better tool.