What century ride athletes need to track
A century ride (100 miles / 160 km) is an endurance event that tests your aerobic base, fueling strategy, and pacing discipline equally. Unlike a criterium or road race where bursts of power matter most, a century is a steady-state challenge - can you produce a consistent power output for 5-8 hours while managing your energy intake and avoiding bonking?
Baseline gives century riders a dashboard that connects their power meter data, heart rate, and recovery metrics in one place. Whether you're targeting your first century or chasing a sub-5-hour finish, the key numbers are your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), your power-duration curve at the 4-6 hour range, your efficiency (power-to-heart-rate ratio), and your nutrition timing relative to power output. These metrics tell you whether your long rides are building sustainable endurance or just accumulating fatigue. Baseline surfaces the trend, not just today's ride, so you can make informed decisions about your training volume and intensity - without needing a coach.
Goal-specific KPIs Baseline surfaces
Functional Threshold Power (FTP). FTP is the highest power you can sustain for approximately 60 minutes. It anchors your training zones and determines your century pace. Baseline estimates your FTP from your best 20-minute and 60-minute efforts in your actual rides - no dedicated test required. As your power-duration curve fills in, the estimate becomes more accurate.
Power-duration curve (critical power). Your critical power is the highest wattage you can sustain for a given duration, from 1 minute to 6+ hours. For century riders, the shape of this curve is everything. A critical power at 5 hours that's close to your 1-hour power indicates exceptional endurance; a steep drop suggests you need more long-ride volume. Baseline computes your full power-duration curve from your ride history and highlights the durations relevant to century pacing.
Efficiency / decoupling (power:HR ratio). As a ride progresses, your heart rate drifts upward at the same power output. The rate of drift is your aerobic decoupling. For a century rider, decoupling above 5% in the first 3 hours means your fueling or base fitness needs attention. Baseline tracks your decoupling trend across every ride and highlights when it improves or worsens.
Nutrition timing and bonk prediction. Baseline integrates with your power and heart rate data to show when your power output starts dropping faster than expected - the signature of glycogen depletion. While Baseline doesn't track nutrition input directly, it correlates your power-duration curve with ride timing to help you identify patterns: you always fade at 4 hours on empty stomachs, or your power stays stable when you eat every 45 minutes.
Training load (CTL/ATL/TSB). Chronic Training Load (CTL) tracks your 42-day rolling average of Training Stress Score; Acute Training Load (ATL) tracks the last 7 days. Training Stress Balance (TSB) tells you if you're fresh or fatigued. Century riders need to manage their training load carefully - too much volume without recovery and your long ride performance will suffer. Baseline plots all three curves alongside your ride performance so you can see how your training load affects your century pace.
Resting HR and HRV trends. A rising resting heart rate and dropping HRV are the earliest signs of non-functional overreaching. For century riders building toward a big event, Baseline surfaces these recovery metrics from WHOOP, Oura, Garmin, or Apple Health alongside your training load. When your recovery metrics trend negative while CTL is climbing, it's time for a recovery week before the training stress becomes counterproductive.
Grade-adjusted power. Hills affect power output, and century rides inevitably include climbing. Baseline shows your power output adjusted for grade so you can compare your effort on a 6% climb to a flat section. This helps with pacing - going over threshold on every climb will leave you with nothing for the last 30 miles.
Recommended pricing tier for this goal
Century riders typically connect a power meter, heart rate strap, and cycling computer (Garmin, Wahoo, or Hammerhead) along with a recovery wearable. The best plan is Baseline Pro at $12/month or $249 lifetime, which unlocks unlimited integrations, the full-resolution heatmap to plan century routes, advanced power-duration curve analysis, AI-powered insights that highlight your decoupling trends, and geographic stats to compare your performance across different terrains. For the cost of a single pair of cycling shoes, you get data integration for years.