What cyclists track in Baseline
Cyclists produce the richest data of any endurance athlete - power in watts, Normalised Power, FTP, TSS, IF, cadence, VAM, heart rate, and GPS tracks from every ride, indoor and outdoor. The problem is that this data is scattered across devices: power meter data goes to your head unit (Garmin, Wahoo), which syncs to Strava, while your recovery data lives in WHOOP or Oura, and your sleep data in Garmin Connect. Baseline brings it all together. Your power curve data, polarised training distribution, and TSS accumulation appear alongside your recovery scores, sleep quality, and HRV trends - so you can see whether your training load is producing fitness gains or just accumulating fatigue.
Sport-specific KPIs we surface
FTP (watts and w/kg). Functional Threshold Power - the highest power you can sustain for approximately one hour. Baseline auto-detects FTP from your best 20-minute efforts and 60-minute efforts, plots it over time, and shows whether your w/kg is trending up or down. The w/kg trend is the single most predictive performance metric for cycling, and Baseline surfaces it prominently.
Normalised Power (NP) and Intensity Factor (IF). NP accounts for variable effort during a ride, giving a truer measure of physiological load than average power. IF expresses ride intensity relative to your FTP - 0.85 IF means you rode at 85% of threshold. Baseline calculates NP and IF for every ride, tracks IF distribution across your training history, and alerts you when IF patterns shift.
Training Stress Score (TSS). TSS quantifies the physiological load of each ride in a single number, combining duration and intensity. TSS accumulates into CTL (chronic training load), ATL (acute training load), and TSB (training stress balance) - the full Performance Management Chart with configurable time constants. Baseline shows your TSS trend, ATL/CTL crossover, and TSB with custom decay rates so you can tune the model to your physiology.
Critical power curve at any duration. Baseline analyses your best power outputs at every duration from 1 second to 4 hours. The critical power curve reveals your profile type: are you a sprinter, a time trialist, or a diesel endurance rider? Tracking the curve shape over time shows whether your training is shifting your strengths in the right direction.
Polarised training distribution. What percentage of your training time is in Z1/Z2 (easy/endurance) vs Z4+ (threshold/VO₂max/sprint)? The research is clear: most cyclists should spend 80% of their time in Z2 and 20% in high-intensity. Baseline tracks your actual distribution month over month and shows whether you're spending enough time in the right zones.
Aerobic decoupling (power:heart rate ratio). As you ride at steady power, your heart rate drifts upward from cardiac drift. The rate of decoupling measures your aerobic fitness - less drift means better endurance. Baseline tracks decoupling trends across rides and over weeks, quantifying whether your base fitness is improving.
VAM (vertical ascent metres per hour). For climbing-focused cyclists, VAM measures your rate of ascent - how many metres of elevation you gain per hour of climbing. Baseline surfaces VAM for every climb, tracks best VAM performances, and correlates VAM with power-to-weight ratio for a complete climbing performance picture.
Recommended integrations for cyclists
- Strava: The essential connection. Most cyclists record with Strava via their head unit, and Baseline imports every ride automatically - power, NP, TSS, GPS, heart rate, and elevation - within minutes via webhook.
- WHOOP: Cycling performance is highly sensitive to recovery. Connect WHOOP to see your power output in the context of your recovery score, HRV, and sleep quality. Threshold sessions after green recovery days vs yellow recovery days produce very different results - Baseline shows you the pattern.
- Garmin: If you use a Garmin Edge head unit, the planned Garmin integration will bring in Body Battery, Training Readiness, and HRV Status alongside your ride data.
- Wahoo: Wahoo ELEMNT users get the richest data through the planned direct integration - indoor trainer ERG mode data, KICKR session detail, and SYSTM workout metadata that Strava doesn't relay.
Pricing tease
Baseline is free to start. The free tier includes your dashboard with one connected source, basic power analysis, and the geographic heatmap. Upgrade to Baseline Pro for $12/month (or $249 lifetime) to unlock unlimited integrations, AI-powered daily insights, the full-resolution heatmap with bleed rendering, polarised distribution tracking, critical power curves at every duration, geographic stats by country and region, trip detection, and 50+ achievement badges for distance milestones and elevation goals. No ads, no data sharing, no hidden costs.