My 1030 tends to overestimate my FTP after some harder than usual rides. But it's not too far off. (That's not surprising, since it's "Heat acclimation %" and "Recovery time in hours" is pretty random.)
I use my Stages power (usually 3, 10, 30 second numbers) for pacing and evaluating my rides, not for a training plan. I really like having the power numbers on display as I ride. It's fantastic for pacing on the local mile long climbs.
~~~
Golden Cheetah
This is free, open source software. The
features thumbnails. I like looking at the charts as the year progresses. Lately, I haven't been targeting any difficult event rides, but it would be very helpful for that.
It's usable with it's defaults, but all the charts can be modified to suit.
I import the rides from the 1030 connected as a USB drive, from it's Activities folder, then I usually edit the ride details so I know what route I did that day. It's designed to use keywords and workout codes to select training sessions later, but I don't use those features.
It auto calcs a lot of metrics: a bunch of training load numbers, CTL, ATL, relative intensity, Critical Power (essentially FTP), with w/kg, power zones, average power, "normalized power--as xPower, etc...
Activity's Data tabs that I use:
Summary of the ride averages and totals
It also lists 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 60, 5 min, 20 min, 30 min, 60 min
bests from the ride, and finds most of the major
climbs. I can drag the graphs and make my own custom named interval data, too.
Critical Power graph: this is really interesting. It's the best wattage for all the time periods, from 1 second to the length of the ride. And the year or season best power numbers too. What's my best 30 second or 5 minute power?
Those are good targets for short or longer climbs. (60 min power is always low, since there's downhills and coasting on any hour range that I ride.)
It also fits a theoretical curve through mybest data watts -- I see I rarely have a strong 30-40 second effort--more 15 sec or 1min, typically. And there's quite a dip around 3-4 minutes. Some targeted climbs going all-out for either of those time ranges might be useful. And I see I never do a consistent hard effort for more than 20 min--my longer time intervals watts drop down a lot.
Ride's stacked charts: Power, W' bal, speed, cadence, altitude, slope %. (W'Bal is the estimate of how much of my short term reserves were used up on hard efforts, and how quickly the "gas tank" was replenished. interesting.)
Map: the ride on a map. I can click a selected "interval" and highlight where that climb, time period, or custom selection occurred. Interesting which climbs or fast sprints are the hardest ones of the day.
Power bar chart: total time in each range of power -- and this chart settings can be changed from large blocks of power, like 50 watt bars, down to narrow ranges.
Power-time scatter: this plots a dot for every second of the ride. I have the dots averaged over 7 seconds. It's not too useful for training, but very interesting to see the wide bands of dots most of the time, and the big peaks from short hard efforts.
Trends section
Performance Manager Chart: The selected season(s) -- I use two years for comparisons. This shows the short term and long term training "stress". As I increase distance and effort, the training load graphs go up. Racers and event riders use this for adjusting training in the weeks before the big day. I just look to see how I'm doing compared to last year. That "slow, weak" feeling in the early spring: it's the same as last year-- good!
Aerobic power, Anerobic power trends charts
Aerobic: 5, 10, 20, 30, 60 min peak power over the season, with power on the Y axis, dates on the X axis
Anerobic: 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 60 second peak power over the season.
~~~
And many more charts that I don't use...