WKO4 is out for Mac only, its $200 and available here for download and a 14 day trial: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/products/wko4/
Initial Impressions
Having used it for a couple of days I really like the direction they are heading. It is a quantum leap ahead of WKO3, but thats a low bar. Obviously I’m biased and new to WKO4 so here is my views from spending time with it. I may have missed things and there may be errors, but this is a first attempt to compare it with GoldenCheetah.
Fundamentally it is still a charting program despite claims otherwise; but that is not a criticism. The way charts are managed and the ability to pick from predefined charts and exchange them is functionally available in GC but the WKO4 approach is markedly better from a UX perspective and the inclusion of a community feature for sharing them looks really promising.
The overall user experience is much, much more polished than WKO3, and they have adopted a fair few ideas that we introduced into GoldenCheetah. This may just be a happy coincidence; selecting date ranges and intervals, mouse over axis to isolate curves etc. I really like the WKO4 aesthetic and think they've done a really good job on that.
One area that strikes me as a bit of a risk is placing what they are calling “expressions” at the heart of chart setup. I found the process of actually creating a chart from scratch fairly tedious and tricky, but also very powerful. The expressions are very similar indeed to the data filters we introduced in v3.0. They have a number of operators and built-in functions that will return values that can be used both to filter (like in GC) but also as user defined metrics (as planned for v4.0). It will be interesting to see where this goes and how widely adopted this is (we could adopt some of the syntax if it becomes popular, but it is a bit ‘weird’ from a programmer's perspective).
From a performance perspective WKO4 is basically ‘ok’. It is a little slow to navigate around compared to GC but then we have had more time to optimise and manage caches etc, chart refreshes are 'ok' but not snappy and respopnding to user selection is also 'ok'. It feels like very little data is being cached, so slower PCs may struggle with it. The download from TrainingPeaks.com is automatic but was slower than via GC which is a big surprise, but that may have been due to lots of new WKO4 users hammering their servers.
Its far too soon to have a definitive view on the big new feature; Coggan's PD model. Initial assessment suggests it consistently underestimates power for durations in the range 2-20 minutes. The model derived estimates for FTP are generally very close to those we estimate using the Extended CP model. The FRC estimate is impossible to assess since we don’t really know what it is supposed to represent. The FTP estimate is typically in the region of MMP for 40 minutes in the data I played with. But again, its far too soon to tell. As users start to use it these things will become clearer.
Top 10 Things WKO4 does that GC doesn’t
1. WKO4 PD Model (GC has several from the science literature)
2. Normative pd curves and associated based power profile (suggest strength/weakness vs normative pd curves)
3. Categorise athlete phenotype based upon PD curve
4. Some derived pedalling metrics and a ‘zorro’ chart
5. Chart exchange, chart drag and drop and pre-canned chart picker (GC has a trends view chart sidebar but its not as slick)
6. Automatically sync with TP.com (GC is manual, but quite a lot faster)
7. View athletes and basic summary in sidebar, good for coaches (GC uses a menu, can’t see summary and you can’t delete them!)
8. User defined metric formula via “expressions” (this was moved in scope to GC v4 from v3.2 as an extension of data filters* see issue #557)
9. Tooltip uses the legend to show values, which works really nicely.
10. Finer grained config for chart setup e.g. set limits as well as auto set (this was moved to v4, several issues related to this)
Top 10 Things GC does that WKO doesn’t
1. Compare rides, intervals and athletes (WKO can summarise and chart intervals individually but MRFA is gone)
2. W’bal (no dFRC in WKO4, maybe its coming in a later build)
3. 260 precomputed metrics for rides and intervals (WKO has user defined formulas and some basics like mmp/min/max/avg etc)
4. More cloud services; Strava, Withings et al (WKO to TrainingPeaks links to other services I think)
5. Train View; indoor training ant+, computrainer, video etc
6. Derived data series; Slope, Core Temp etc (could possibly be constructed via “expressions” ?)
7. Multiple power duration models (WKO4 uses Coggan model)
8. Interval Discovery; sustained, segments, climbs etc (WKO4 identifies peak power/pace)
9. Data management tools (Merge, Join, Fix Tools, Anomaly Detection, Batch Export/Conversion etc)
10. More chart types; Treemap, 3d, aerolab, HR:Power
* I’m more interested in providing a library for integrating with "R" to enable data to be used within that for advanced analysis than try to put R type functionality into GoldenCheetah. But will still add user defined metrics; there is one user who has asked for this persistently, he knows who he is ;)
Cheers,
Mark
Good review TNX. A SAS visual analytics / Tableau kind of analysis block (or tab) would be really nice. Also a link to R would be great.
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5. Chart exchange, chart drag and drop and pre-canned chart picker (GC has a trends view chart sidebar but its
- reset to default << and make the default charts.xml available as www.goldencheetah.org/charts.xml so we can update independently of release
I like the "webapp" part - actually posted the idea at the end of 2014:"So here some "food for thought" - why not providing a capability to share chart setups with the community - why not having the ability to send a chart setup to "a server" - together with some explanation (e.g. pre-requisites,...), a picture of the setup. And allowing others to "pull" from the place into their local GC version. So really creating a community of GC Chart Best Practices."Have to admit - never went beyond this first idea - ... so nice to see that a product comes up with a similar concept. Which my prove that such an "Chart-Exchange" may be a good development.Original post here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/golden-cheetah-users/Joern%7Csort:date/golden-cheetah-users/vRsadylqHRg/zPkzzL4DwsEJJoern
What I was thinking about, was a real interactive "web-shop" like offering (just without money) - where people can Rank/Rate,...But for this you need more than a Web-Server, storing static content. I might re-vitalize the idea over next winter - since my currentwork brings me quite near to w.r.t tools, technology,... of building something like that. Only gap (right now) would be to find a way (== someone)to host the respective services for free. But let's see what is priority for GC 4.0 and what's my availability.JoernP.S. No claiming any IP on this idea ;-)
* I’m more interested in providing a library for integrating with "R" to enable data to be used within that for advanced analysis than try to put R type functionality into GoldenCheetah. But will still add user defined metrics; there is one user who has asked for this persistently, he knows who he is ;)
Cheers,
Mark
Just having a look now that it has pulled in my 1300-odd flies off TP, and I'm a little underwhelmed after the 3 year wait..
What I really like is the PD curves - well, not the wavy curves themselves cos they are messy and difficult to read, but the stacks - 5s, 1m, 5m and FTP. These are nice and clear, and comparing back-and-forth between the different years is interesting to see progression. The automatic 'phenotype identification', so classifying a rider as a TT'er, or whatever is a little gimmicky.. its a 1-off 'ooh factor' but I'd be interested to see how much more value they could really add from pointing this out?
In the past, I usually plot a WPK curve of these durations and Alt-Tab between a JPG of the Coggan levels - Could GC perhaps consider a backdrop for WPK charts in the trends tab that is selectable as a tick box in the chart settings? The longitudinal view of plotting multiple point would really be nice to see progression to - its not just a snapshot (though it could be by 'show in zones'). Charts would probably have to be stacked to make them readable, but is there an IP issue that prevents you guys from building it in there?
What I did not like is that all the custom charts 404'd out from the page when I clicked 'install', but a quick fix could sort this out. I like the concept of sharing useful charts.. definitely has a lot of runway.
GC's trainer functionality is still a MASSIVE win for me that TP lacks, though with all the new online training portals (Swift, et al), I suppose that its not a huge sacrifice.. perhaps just more expensive.
Also the GC comparison functionality (intervals / rides / climbs) is a killer piece of functionality that I could not do without.
WKO4 has a nice dark colour theme too, though I've seen something like it before :-)
My 2c..
Jean
Just having a look now that it has pulled in my 1300-odd flies off TP, and I'm a little underwhelmed after the 3 year wait..
What I really like is the PD curves - well, not the wavy curves themselves cos they are messy and difficult to read, but the stacks - 5s, 1m, 5m and FTP. These are nice and clear, and comparing back-and-forth between the different years is interesting to see progression. The automatic 'phenotype identification', so classifying a rider as a TT'er, or whatever is a little gimmicky.. its a 1-off 'ooh factor' but I'd be interested to see how much more value they could really add from pointing this out?
In the past, I usually plot a WPK curve of these durations and Alt-Tab between a JPG of the Coggan levels - Could GC perhaps consider a backdrop for WPK charts in the trends tab that is selectable as a tick box in the chart settings? The longitudinal view of plotting multiple point would really be nice to see progression to - its not just a snapshot (though it could be by 'show in zones'). Charts would probably have to be stacked to make them readable, but is there an IP issue that prevents you guys from building it in there?
What I did not like is that all the custom charts 404'd out from the page when I clicked 'install', but a quick fix could sort this out. I like the concept of sharing useful charts.. definitely has a lot of runway.
GC's trainer functionality is still a MASSIVE win for me that TP lacks, though with all the new online training portals (Swift, et al), I suppose that its not a huge sacrifice.. perhaps just more expensive.
Also the GC comparison functionality (intervals / rides / climbs) is a killer piece of functionality that I could not do without.
WKO4 has a nice dark colour theme too, though I've seen something like it before :-)
On Saturday, 25 July 2015 13:18:40 UTC+1, Jean Div wrote:GC's trainer functionality is still a MASSIVE win for me that TP lacks, though with all the new online training portals (Swift, et al), I suppose that its not a huge sacrifice.. perhaps just more expensive.
Yeah, it doesn't get the love it deserves, as we focus on the other aspects more. Functionally its ok, but the UX is horrible. Its just not a priority for me personally. We need a dev to lead it forward.
Mark
* I’m more interested in providing a library for integrating with "R" to enable data to be used within that for advanced analysis than try to put R type functionality into GoldenCheetah. But will still add user defined metrics; there is one user who has asked for this persistently, he knows who he is ;)
Cheers,
Mark
You can get R to read in GC CSV/JSON data into dataframes pretty easily. Not sure a library is really needed.
Mark
The thing I'd really like is an interface that allowed you to add some arbitrary thing (say 1rm squat) with a date, (many times, of course!), that can then be easily added into trend charts. I'd love an easy way to chart peak power, 5s power etc over time (the anaerobic trend chart) with this data on it as well. It helps to see correlations.
On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 02:25:15 UTC+1, Bleve wrote:The thing I'd really like is an interface that allowed you to add some arbitrary thing (say 1rm squat) with a date, (many times, of course!), that can then be easily added into trend charts. I'd love an easy way to chart peak power, 5s power etc over time (the anaerobic trend chart) with this data on it as well. It helps to see correlations.If you add 1rm squat as metadata you can plot it.You can add a weight workout too as a manual workout and just add them.
On Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at 3:53:35 PM UTC+10, Mark Liversedge wrote:On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 02:25:15 UTC+1, Bleve wrote:The thing I'd really like is an interface that allowed you to add some arbitrary thing (say 1rm squat) with a date, (many times, of course!), that can then be easily added into trend charts. I'd love an easy way to chart peak power, 5s power etc over time (the anaerobic trend chart) with this data on it as well. It helps to see correlations.If you add 1rm squat as metadata you can plot it.You can add a weight workout too as a manual workout and just add them.
Thanks Mark, will that then be plottable in the trends charts?
WKO4 is out for Mac only, its $200 and available here for download and a 14 day trial: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/products/wko4/
Initial Impressions
Having used it for a couple of days I really like the direction they are heading. It is a quantum leap ahead of WKO3, but thats a low bar. Obviously I’m biased and new to WKO4 so here is my views from spending time with it. I may have missed things and there may be errors, but this is a first attempt to compare it with GoldenCheetah.
Fundamentally it is still a charting program despite claims otherwise; but that is not a criticism. The way charts are managed and the ability to pick from predefined charts and exchange them is functionally available in GC but the WKO4 approach is markedly better from a UX perspective and the inclusion of a community feature for sharing them looks really promising.
The overall user experience is much, much more polished than WKO3, and they have adopted a fair few ideas that we introduced into GoldenCheetah. This may just be a happy coincidence; selecting date ranges and intervals, mouse over axis to isolate curves etc. I really like the WKO4 aesthetic and think they've done a really good job on that.
Top 10 Things WKO4 does that GC doesn’t
1. WKO4 PD Model (GC has several from the science literature)
2. Normative pd curves and associated based power profile (suggest strength/weakness vs normative pd curves)
3. Categorise athlete phenotype based upon PD curve
4. Some derived pedalling metrics and a ‘zorro’ chart
5. Chart exchange, chart drag and drop and pre-canned chart picker (GC has a trends view chart sidebar but its not as slick)
6. Automatically sync with TP.com (GC is manual, but quite a lot faster)
7. View athletes and basic summary in sidebar, good for coaches (GC uses a menu, can’t see summary and you can’t delete them!)
8. User defined metric formula via “expressions” (this was moved in scope to GC v4 from v3.2 as an extension of data filters* see issue #557)
9. Tooltip uses the legend to show values, which works really nicely.
10. Finer grained config for chart setup e.g. set limits as well as auto set (this was moved to v4, several issues related to this)
Top 10 Things GC does that WKO doesn’t
1. Compare rides, intervals and athletes (WKO can summarise and chart intervals individually but MRFA is gone)
2. W’bal (no dFRC in WKO4, maybe its coming in a later build)
3. 260 precomputed metrics for rides and intervals (WKO has user defined formulas and some basics like mmp/min/max/avg etc)
4. More cloud services; Strava, Withings et al (WKO to TrainingPeaks links to other services I think)
5. Train View; indoor training ant+, computrainer, video etc
6. Derived data series; Slope, Core Temp etc (could possibly be constructed via “expressions” ?)
7. Multiple power duration models (WKO4 uses Coggan model)
8. Interval Discovery; sustained, segments, climbs etc (WKO4 identifies peak power/pace)
9. Data management tools (Merge, Join, Fix Tools, Anomaly Detection, Batch Export/Conversion etc)
10. More chart types; Treemap, 3d, aerolab, HR:Power
WKO4 is out for Mac only, its $200 and available here for download and a 14 day trial: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/products/wko4/