WKO+ competitor?

A light bike doesn't replace good fitness.

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phourgenres
Posts: 212
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2011 7:19 pm

by phourgenres

I just finished reading the allen and coggan book cover to cover. I'm still trying to convince myself that buying this software is worth the 129 dollars though. Is there any competitors out there? Did you feel it was worth the extra money?

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Tapeworm
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by Tapeworm

Golden Cheetah is very good, and the price is about right.
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DuncanS
Posts: 143
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 4:42 pm

by DuncanS

+1.

I'd just trialled WKO+ when Nick published his power articles, which put me on to Golden Cheetah. A short time using Golden Cheetah left me wondering why I'd even wasted my time on the eval of WKO+.

phourgenres
Posts: 212
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2011 7:19 pm

by phourgenres

The way it looks on the site, the software is free?!?

dvincere
Posts: 198
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2012 6:40 pm

by dvincere

Golden Cheetah is free, open source software. It is much better thank WKO+ IMO. Just try it, you have nothing to lose.

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Tapeworm
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by Tapeworm

Free? Nah, let me provide you an account number you have to deposit the money into first :D
"Physiology is all just propaganda and lies... all waiting to be disproven by the next study."
"I'm not a real doctor; But I am a real worm; I am an actual worm." - TMBG

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Szczuldo
Posts: 561
Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:22 pm
Location: Salt Lake City, UT

by Szczuldo

While not free I am a big fan of SportTracks and the Training Load plugin along with a few others. The software costs a one time 35$ and depending on the plugins you want you might be paying a bit of extra ( usually <15$ ) Overall the software is very clean looking and customizable enough for my needs. The only drawback is SportTracks is Windows only if that applies to you. I tried Golden Cheetah because it was cross platform but was not able to get into it. SportTracks also has a 'trial' version which you can use indefinitely, just a few features are locked and unfortunately the Training Load plugin will not work in the trial version. Since the trial is free I'd say give it a shot and see what you like more between Golden Cheetah and SportTracks.
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TimW
Posts: 536
Joined: Sat May 09, 2009 1:52 pm
Location: England, UK

by TimW

I was a sportstracks user a few of years back but switched to GC. It's very good if not entirely intuative at times.

However if a proper Mac version of WKO is released I might go for it. It would be nice to use the graphs and capabilities etc as shown in the books.

At the end of the day a powermeter is expensive so *if* to get the best out of it requires $129, it's probably worth it?

eric
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Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2003 9:47 pm
Location: Santa Cruz, California, USA
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by eric

I'm a fan of GC. I run Linux on my computer (yes I realize that makes me an anorak). Having to run and maintain POS Windows just for WKO was a huge pain and made WKO run slow. The people behind TrainingPeaks seem to have a low opinion of open source software so the chances of WKO running on Linux are zero.

And with GC, if there is a feature missing, I can contribute it. That's more effective than waiting for TrainingPeaks to get a round to it. Obviously that's not a feature for most people.

skinnie
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2014 10:52 pm

by skinnie

I use sport tracks too, bought it at 25usd (if you google you can find discount codes).
it's nice because of the plugins, but I didn't knew about GC!
Thanks for showing.
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11.4
Posts: 1095
Joined: Tue May 23, 2006 4:33 am

by 11.4

Check out the Google Wattage forum. Tons of info on GC and anything else there.

I use GC mostly because it's Mac-compatible and because it's open to customization for my own particular needs or preferences. Ignore posts from years ago because it used to be rather touchy and you really had to know what you were doing to use it, but that's changed now. As far as I'm concerned, it's as good as WKO+. I prefer SRM's software for data from the SRM simply because SRM doesn't delete or modify any data, but even so I port it over to GC after I'm done in SRM because the graphics and the ability to communicate and share it are better.

eric
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by eric

GC doesn't delete or modify data. One of the core principals is to keep your data unmodified. Any changes are made in an auxiliary file.

Of course just to be sure you should also copy the .fit or whatever files to an additional directory first. Disk space is cheap and that data took you hours to generate.

There's active development on GC with some neat features coming. At times there are developer builds with new features that are available before the official release so its worth checking the web site periodically.

11.4
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by 11.4

eric wrote:GC doesn't delete or modify data. One of the core principals is to keep your data unmodified. Any changes are made in an auxiliary file.

Of course just to be sure you should also copy the .fit or whatever files to an additional directory first. Disk space is cheap and that data took you hours to generate.

There's active development on GC with some neat features coming. At times there are developer builds with new features that are available before the official release so its worth checking the web site periodically.


My reference was to WKO.

However, doesn't SRM data get stripped partially, even in GC? I've been told that many times by SRM.

eric
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by eric

When it grabs a .fit file (from a Garmin 500 in my case) it stores it in a .fit.bak file. That's the same as the completely unmodified .fit file which I grab off the Garmin's file system before I fire up GC to import it. I verified a couple using md5sum.

Any USB mountable head unit should work the same.

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nickl
Posts: 140
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:37 am

by nickl

http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/

$80/year, but with a free trial. It's good.

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