Personal Best race-day targets

Why Power? Personal Best race-day targets

Does this mean a new Personal Best (PB) at every event?

No.

It means power can identify race-day targets that you can maintain throughout the event to achieve the best result you’re capable of on the day.

How?

The Stryd Race Power Calculator

The Stryd Race Power Calculator uses your workouts from the last 90 days, your Auto-CP (Threshold Power) and (optionally) information about the event course and the expected environmental conditions to produce a best-case target power and an estimate of your finish time.

SuperPower Calculator (SPC)

Using your Threshold Power, Running Effectiveness (how well you convert effort into forward motion), a fatigue resistance measure specific to your race distance, and (optionally) the expected environmental conditions, SPC for sheets can provide race power target scenarios, the equivalent percentage of your Threshold Power and estimates of your finish time.

It sounds complicated …

Power-based targets are a little different than you may be used to.

They’re based on you, not on population averages – your current fitness, your fatigue resistance, and your ability to convert power to speed.

They’re a power (or effort) target, not a hopeful goal time.

To quote Steve Palladino “your time is determined by the power you can run, not by the power you hope to run.”

… but power targets are easy to use on Race-Day

Your power target (or target range) guides how hard you should run on race-day.

How hard you should run on flat sections, on hilly sections, and in wind. For all of those, your target remains the same.

You don’t need complicated calculations or printed wrist bands to giving your pace for each section of the course. And you don’t need to adjust your heart rate target to allow for drift in the later sections.

Using a power target means you won’t be able to run with pacers … but you’ll have your own “pacer”: a power target that remains unchanged over the entire race duration; a target that will give you the best result you’re capable of on the day.

To use it? Just ‘run to power’.