Setting up the tracker

The Workout Tracker builds a season from your goal races, then follows it week by week with the sessions your watch records. This page takes a new account from sign up to its first season plan. Plan about half an hour, plus the time your history takes to import.

Before you start

• An invitation code. Sign up needs one while the tracker is in development. Ask at contact@montagneur.com.
• Your heart rate thresholds and your FTP, if you know them. Without tests, your date of birth gives the heart rate thresholds; a rider with a power meter still needs an FTP.
• Your past sessions: the archive of your Strava or TrainingPeaks account, files from your watch, or an intervals.icu account that your watch already feeds.
• A goal race with a date. Without one, the tracker can build a season to stay in shape.

Why the order matters

Do the steps in this order: your thresholds, then your history, then the plan.

• The training load (TL) of a session is computed when the session is imported, with the thresholds saved at that moment. Changing a threshold later does not recompute the sessions already in.
• The plan reads your history to set its level: your median weekly load over the last 52 complete weeks.
• It also reads the last two complete weeks to decide how the season opens, and prices bike sessions from your own rides.

Import first and set your thresholds afterwards, and the plan is built on loads measured against placeholder thresholds.

1. Create the account

Open tracker.montagneur.com and follow Sign up. Three fields: your email, a password of 8 characters or more, and the invitation code. The EN | FR switch at the top sets the language of the account.

You are logged in at once, and a welcome email follows. The privacy policy says what is stored, where, and how to erase it.

2. Settings: about you

You land on Training sessions, with a welcome box above the calendar. Open Settings, at the top right next to Log out. The tab holds three sections, then Save, then your account.

Three things to know before you type:

• The fields start with placeholder values. They are someone else's values. Check every one.
• Nothing is kept until you press Save. Save sends the whole tab at once and reloads the page.
• A dot next to a field marks a value changed from its default. An untouched placeholder has no dot.

About me and physiology

• Date of birth. Used only when Thresholds unknown is ticked. Tick that box without a date of birth and nothing is estimated.
• Thresholds unknown. Tick it if you have never tested. The aerobic threshold (AeT) is then set at 180 minus your age, the anaerobic threshold (AnT) 11 bpm above it, and both fields are greyed out.
• AeT and AnT, in bpm, if you know them, each with the date of its test. The field tests are on this site.
• Bike FTP, in watts, with the date of its test. See measuring your cycling FTP.
• Height is optional.

AeT must be below AnT, or the save is refused. After Save, two tables show your running and cycling zones. They follow your thresholds: you never edit them.

3. Settings: devices and connections

Tracking equipment tells the tracker where your data comes from and how far to trust it.

Watch synchronisation. intervals.icu is the bridge between your watch and the tracker, whatever the brand. Connect your watch to intervals.icu, then paste your intervals.icu API key here. Connecting your watch with intervals.icu shows both steps.

• Sync history is how far back the first synchronisation reaches: 30 days by default, up to 365. Set it to 365 in the same Save as the key. The first synchronisation starts as soon as the page reloads, and later ones only go back 3 days before the last one.
• Connect the watch to intervals.icu directly. Activities that intervals.icu received from Strava are skipped, because Strava's terms do not allow their reuse.

Rest heart rate and HRV synchronisation. If you own an Oura ring, paste a personal access token. See Connecting your Oura ring.

Weight. If you own a Withings scale, tick Withings smart scale: a weight from the scale is then never replaced by one from your watch. Connect the scale only after the Save of step 4, because Connect Withings leaves the page and anything not saved is lost. See Connecting your Withings scale. Without a scale, you can type your weight in the header of the tracker.

Other sensors. The three boxes are ticked at first. Untick what you do not own:

• CORE sensor (body temperature). Unticked, a notice above the calendar says the thermal analysis is off.
• On-bike power meter. Unticked, planned rides carry no watt targets.
• Home trainer with power meter. Unticked, the power of an indoor ride is marked as possibly estimated.

4. Settings: objectives

Main cardio sports. Keep only the ones you train for: the plan writes sessions in those sports and no others. At least one must stay ticked. Mountaineering and ski mountaineering bring running sessions, and no cycling unless Cycling is ticked. From January to March, ski mountaineering turns the trail sessions into skimo sessions.

Future objectives. Press Add an objective once per race. A new row starts as a C, so set its importance first. Then fill in the name, the date, the sport, the distance and the elevation gain. Distance and elevation gain give the estimated duration of the race, which sizes the recovery after it. Without a distance the tracker assumes 8 hours. A race whose date has passed leaves the table on its own.

The importance letter decides what the season does around the race:

• A. The season is built backwards from it, with a taper before it and recovery weeks after it. A cycling race has its taper inside the race week. You need at least one A with a date.
• B. A preparation race inside the training: no taper, lighter days before it, rest after it.
• C. A training race. It replaces a session of its week, a hard one first.

No race yet? Tick Objective is to stay in shape. The season then becomes a 52 week loop without a race, and the table is ignored.

Then press Save. If you own a Withings scale, use Connect Withings now.

5. Bring in your history

Your thresholds are saved: now import your past sessions. Aim for a year, since the plan reads the last 52 complete weeks. With fewer than 8 weeks of sessions it reads nothing and uses the value you type in step 6. With fewer than 30 weeks it takes 20 % off that median.

From intervals.icu. Once the key is saved, the synchronisation runs when you open the tracker, at most every 6 hours, or at once with Sync now. It brings up to 200 activities at a time, the most recent first. Press Sync now again until it brings nothing new.

From files. The Import files box sits in the header, under the HRV, resting heart rate and weight boxes. Drop files on it, or click it to browse.

• FIT, TCX and GPX files, plain or gzipped.
• Zip archives of such files, including archives inside archives.
• The archive Strava sends when you ask for your data. With its photos it is usually too big: zip only its activities folder.
• A TrainingPeaks export.

Each file is limited to 100 MB. For a bigger history, write to contact@montagneur.com.

Each file gets a line with its progress, and the page reloads when all are done. A session already in the account is skipped. Two devices that recorded the same outing give one session.

6. The Training Plan panel

The plan has its own panel: Training Plan, folded at the top of Training sessions. Open it.

Tracker configuration. Choose Build my training plan. The panel then shows four blocks. (No training plan keeps the tracker to your own data. Train with a coach connects you with a coach who has an account on the tracker.)

Starting date of the plan. The season starts on the Monday of that date. Left empty, it starts next Monday.

Past year training. One number: your Median weekly training load (TL), what a usual week of the past year cost you. As a scale, 1 h at threshold is about 100 TL, 1 h of easy running 50 to 60, 1 h of easy cycling or hiking 30 to 45.

• With 8 weeks of history or more, you do not need to work it out. Refresh this value based on history fills it in, and the plan computes it again from your sessions when it is built.
• Without history, the field holds a placeholder. Type your own value, or open Help me estimate the value: give your weekly hours and how hard they usually are, then press Use this value.
• Take a usual week, not your best one. The first weeks of the plan are set from this number.

Weekly availability. For each day, the time you have for training, as hh:mm, and a Commuting box for the days you can ride or run to work. Count training time only, not changing or showering. Ticked commutes come on top of this time.

• A day with Commuting ticked is a work day. Otherwise more than 2 hours makes a free day, 2 hours or less a family day.
• A day at 0:00 gets no training.
• Sessions are shortened to fit their day, never below 30 minutes, easy or hard. A commute is never shortened.
• When your week cannot hold its target load, the target of that week comes down, and the week says why.
• The starting values are placeholders too. Until you change a time, the times are not used as limits.

Describe the week you have, not the one you would like. A plan built on optimistic hours is a plan you stop following.

Commuting. If you commute actively, choose the sport and give the time of the trip in the morning and in the evening. The sport must be ticked in Main cardio sports. Left empty, commutes are rides of 40 minutes in and 50 back when Cycling is ticked, and there are none otherwise.

Then press Save, under the panel.

7. Build the plan

Press Rebuild the season plan and confirm. It is also the button for the first plan. It does not save the panel for you, so press Save first.

The season runs from its start to your last A race, then recovery and two transition weeks. The load rises in blocks of three loading weeks and one easier week. A taper comes before each A race and recovery after it. A short season skips the phases it has no room for.

How the season opens depends on your last two complete weeks:

• If one of them reached 60 % of your median weekly load, you are already training: the plan opens on the Base phase.
• If both stayed below, or there is no history: up to four flat Preparation weeks at 60 % of that load, fewer when the race is close.
• If both were empty, after a break: a gentle ramp that starts at about half that load.
• With Objective is to stay in shape, the loop always opens with 8 Preparation weeks.

With Build my training plan saved, the calendar shows this week and the next two. The plan starts next Monday unless you chose a date, so this week may stay empty. The welcome box goes away.

If the build is refused, the message says why. Usually it is one of these:

• No A race with a date, and Objective is to stay in shape is not ticked.
• The starting date falls after your first A race.
• A race sits too close to the start, with less than a full week before it.

After the first plan

• A setting change never rewrites the plan by itself. When the change matters for the plan, a dot appears on Settings. Update the training plan, in the panel, then rewrites the next four weeks from next Monday.
• Some changes need a Rebuild: a changed race, a new starting date, the stay in shape choice or a new median load. Update tells you so.
• A trip or an illness goes into the events above the calendar. The house and plane boxes of each day cover remote work and a business trip.
• Sessions arrive on their own from intervals.icu, or through the import box. The plan compares each week with its target and adjusts the weeks ahead.
• Recovery data steers intensity. When your HRV or resting heart rate stray from your references, hard sessions are turned into easy ones. The references are the median of your last 60 days; with fewer than 14 days of values, defaults stand in.
• A threshold changed later applies to the sessions imported after the change. The sessions already in keep their load.

The rest of the tracker is described on What the tracker does.

The tracker plans training and follows training load. It is not a medical device, and it is no substitute for medical advice. If something misbehaves, such as a session that will not import or a figure that reads wrong, write to contact@montagneur.com with the date of the session and the watch it came from.