And accumulated on Summary for the selected Date Range / Season:



The custom metric behaves exactly the same as a builtin metric, so it can be used in Metric Trends charts to see weekly/monthly Aerobic Points, segmented or filtered by sport, for any date range or use the compare mode to compare several season, or used as input for a PMC chart.

I will add some of this charts as examples in other posts.

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Ale Martinez
www.amtriathlon.com

Once you have the Aerobic Points metric defined it is easy to use it in chart, for example to track training volume over a season grouped by weeks and segmented by sport:



Selecting All Dates and grouping for years allow to see training load volume pogression:



To create this chart and play with your data you can simply drag&drop the attached chart definition on GoldenCheetah v3.4

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Ale Martinez
www.amtriathlon.com

Thanks for this walk through!

Other new feature that can be used in this case is the R integration, for example to see distribution by sport for the selected Date Range/Season as a pie chart:



The script can be hidden and there is no need to type it, drag&drop of the attached .gchart file creates this chart on GC.

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Ale Martinez
www.amtriathlon.com

Are those points based on what reasearch? One single individual physiology or average of many people? This is similar to calculating max HR based on 220-Age, and probably max HR is more precise and closer to reality.

why 1 point for 100m swimming, not 1.05 for 100m or 1 point for 50m swimming??

Imagine this: I'm beginner athlete and you are great athlete.

I have never run in my life and never swam, only biked. You are excellent swimmer and very good runner. How can we say the points we collect during run and swim are the same, totally makes no sense.

This hocus pocus could not even work semi precisely for one individual, since it doesn't take any correction for physiological adaptations gained in each discipline.

How this could help in training? 50 points in January would be totally different from 50 points in June...

Are you saying that you don't believe these statements?

"Science in Golden Cheetah

Wherever possible we choose to use published science. Science that has been developed with the academic rigour demanded by the scientific method; evidence based, peer-reviewed and original. This means we are able to provide the best analysis available"

http://www.goldencheetah.org/#section-science

(BTW, note that there is just as little/much basis for Daniel's points system, which has been in GoldenCheetah for almost 10 y. At least in that case, though, Jack Daniels has a doctorate in exercise physiology as well as a long-standing reputation as a coach.)

This thread doesn't need you, go away.

Uh-huh. Just like Trump doesn't need the media calling him on his hypocrisy...

Wow, that article is almost 10 years old. I vaguely remember reading it when Dan posted it.

My take is Dan is trying to help determine if your workouts over a period of time (week, month) are "balanced" by trying to normalize the effort associated with various workouts. I highly doubt there is any peer-reviewed research to back up his numbers. Maybe Dan will chime in on his original intents.

Perhaps I can help.

This point system is more than 25 years old. I developed it mostly for those new to triathlon. It's designed to give those naive to the sport some sense of scale and equivalency.

While not particularly scientific I think it's still not bad (with numerous caveats). It assumes you're balanced in your abilities. If you find it much harder to perform X points in one sport versus another I suggest then you have a deficiency in that sport.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The real value of Ale's post isn't in the specific metric used -- he could've chosen anything -- its value is showing how one can construct and integrate user-defined metrics into GC.

Thanks Dan for publishing your point system. I never assumed it had a scientific basis. I had been doing tri long enough before reading the article to determine that the estimates were accurate enough to be a simple measure of training load. I still use it and have no doubt it has helped me stay healthy and happy.

That made me laugh, unless it was supposed to be in pink.

Making that statement to Andrew Coggan in reference to Golden Cheetah reminds me of when Doug Stern got called out about what makes him qualified to give swimming advice.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

With all due respect, I think that you are confused.

Mark is the programmer primarily responsible for GoldenCheetah; I'm the scientist behind all the ideas listed in my .sig.

I read Automaticjack's comment to imply that you had as much to contribute to this discussion as Doug Stern had to contribute to any having to do with swimming

reminds me of when Doug Stern got called out about what makes him qualified to give swimming advice
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I don't remember Doug Stern. I do remember Gary Hall, Sr. though. That was classic.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

So, you're saying that Automaticjack was saying Mark was having a Hansen brother moment?

https://groups.google.com/...FME2osI/zkHtUzOCzb8J

Exactly!

I don't wish to speak for him, but I believe so :-)

Doug Stern was called out many years ago. It was pretty funny, but probably not as good as the Gary Hall Sr. instance, which I had forgotten about.

Doug died several years ago. It was a big loss to the community.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

doug stern is the best ever at teaching adult onset swimmers. when i write my guppy challenge installments, i pretty much have in the back of my mind, "what would doug stern do?"

gary hall, sr., is right up there. and gerry rodrigues. there are a few good ones floating around, pardon the pun.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I will steal it and use it as a basis for a GoldenCheetah video tutorial, its been really neat.

First I love your forum and have a great deal of respect.

I'm not even sure how to respond, because I'm sure you know how unrealistic this point system is (those days when we understand so much more about activities and physiology), and how much understanding of physiology and training one has to have to adjust it appropriately to make any sense\benefit out of it

Few obvious flows for average reader:

100km in Florida with 1m of total elevation gives 100 points
100km in South of France with 6500m of elevation also gives 100 points

10km run upwind uphill in -2C gives 40 points
10km run downhill downwind at 23C gives the same 40 points

2000m open water swim with heavy current gives 20points
2000m in the pool swim gives the same 20 points

100km on Cervelo superbike gives 100points
100km on WallMart steel commuter gives 100points

50km in Giro Aerohead helmet gives 50points
50km in THIS helmet also gives 50points

This doesn't give much scale at all.

I very rarely see new people to triathlon that are balanced in abilities, I do not even know if I have seen one. Lance Armstrong was totally not balanced... his swim was most of the time bad.

This point system could be used by pro triathlete doing swims in the same pool, cycling on the same trainer and running on the treadmill, but I would still be puzzled how to adjust for adaptations, you would need to flag that somehow.

We talk about skin suits giving 2-5W advantage , frames that save 4 watts, and the same people will use this point system to determine their workload....
They will do that, because they have great faith in you Dan, will that really help them in anyway?



System doesn't have to be scientific, many scientists, Doctors, Professors, award winners are driven by market and gains. $ talks many times.

I'm sure many older guys remember

"Doctor's recommended Lucky Strikes:"

There are of course better alternatives, in GoldenCheetah we would recommend using TriScore and TRIMP when seeking equivalence across run, bike, swim. There isn't much evidence to suggest that equivalence is meaningful for external load, so maybe stick to TRIMP and individual sport metrics.

But much more importantly and as already posted here, some folks find it helpful (maybe they don't choose edge cases for all their workouts) and this thread was intended to be an example of creating and plotting your own metrics in GoldenCheetah.