Cycling Power Lab provides performance modelling technology for road cycling and triathlon. We use holistic performance modelling, which accounts for the interplay of rider's power supply (mostly constrained by physiological factors) and power demands (contrained by physics or engineering concerns), to simulate, explain, improve and optmise performance. Our main performance modelling product offers Pre-Event and Post-Event intelligence. In the Pre-Event context we apply modelling to predict rider time-on-course, determine optimal equipment and pacing, among other useful metrics. The Post-Event context applies more diagnostic capabilities to reveal an estimate of rider aerodynamic drag, power (energy) consumption, pacing quality, and further analytics not available in most cycling analysis software.

Our site includes a number of articles, illustrative models and calculators which demonstrate many of the concepts, often interactively. You can use our performance models without ever having seen these, but they provide a useful background to the concepts and issues in parameter estimation.

Applications

You cannot improve what you cannot measure, and holistic performance modelling has a lot to offer the coaching process as well as self-coached athletes. Goal setting, athlete and performance benchmarking can all be done better with objective facts. The most powerful applications though are around event execution, in pre-event planning and post-event analysis. You can read and demo some of our thinking on these topics.

Power Meters

Power meters are the essential tool for a rider looking to take advantage of performance modelling. Whilst a power meter tells us what power a rider is delivering or capable of delivering it is important to realise that it is also revealing the sum of the power demands acting on the rider at the same time and that this enables performance modelling. Our website would not be complete without some guidance on choosing and using a power meter.