We are gearing up for a big fall racing season with new updates across the entire Stryd platform. Enjoy!

What is new?

Today, we have three exciting new updates to the Stryd ecosystem.

Update #1: An updated iOS app with two new features.
 - Critical Power History: a historical view on how your overall fitness is changing
 - Running Stress Balance: a real time view into how productive your training is

Update #2: An update to the Stryd Zones data field that features visual power zones.

Update #3: An update to the auto-calculated Critical Power tool that accounts for how submaximal workouts have maintained your Critical Power.

Update #1: Critical Power history on your iOS App

Critical Power history displays how your Critical Power has changed over the last three months. With this graph, you can instantly understand how your overall running fitness is trending.

This new feature pairs great with auto-calculated Critical Power. A historical view of auto-calculated Critical Power represents how your recent training is shaping your fitness.

How to update: You can access this new feature by downloading the latest version of the iOS app from the App Store. Click here to visit the Stryd app on the App Store>>

Update #1: Running Stress Balance on your iOS App

Running Stress Balance tells you how productive your recent training has been.

This graph helps you quickly identify which training state you are in. If you can align your training state with your fitness goals, you are in a sweet spot that is giving you the best chance at achieving your running goals.

Running Stress Balance breaks your training state into six different categories.

If you are in the Overreaching category, you have placed a tremendous amount of stress on your body in a short amount of time. If you do find yourself in this state, we recommend that you allow your body sufficient rest so you do not risk injury from overtraining.

If you are in the Cautionary category, your training volume has considerably ramped up. You should be careful not to remain in this category for an extended amount of time or push your way into the Overreaching category because you will likely see diminishing returns from your efforts. Ideally, you should allow for some extra recovery in order to move to a Productive status.

If you are in the Productive or Maintenance category, you are in the sweet spot between stress and recovery. Your fitness is steadily improving because you are stressing your body and then letting your body adapt and improve from that stress. Ideally, you want to be regularly shifting between the Productive category and Maintenance categories to establish a rhythm of steady improvement.

If you are in the Performance category, you are race day ready. You have allowed your body to fully adapt from the recent training so you will be fresh for the race. This is the perfect status to be in if you want to give yourself the best chance of setting a new personal record on race day.

If you are in the N/A category, your recent training has not been enough to contribute to your fitness. You will soon reach a state of detraining. We recommend to ramp up your training to move back to a Productive or Maintenance state in order to acheive beneficial training.

How to update: You can access this new feature by downloading the latest version of the iOS app from the App Store. Click here to visit the Stryd app on the App Store>>

Update #2: Visual Power Zones on Stryd Zones data field

The latest update to the Stryd Zones data field brings full screen visual running power zones to your Garmin Connect IQ watch.

With this new visual indicator, it is easier than ever to stay in your power zone with a glance to your watch face. A combination of colors and a real-time zone gauge tells you exactly how hard you are running.

This update to Stryd Zones is compatible with all Connect IQ 1.4+ watches.

How to update: You can access this new feature by downloading the latest version of the Stryd Zones data field from the Connect IQ Store. Click here to download the Stryd Zones from the Connect IQ store>>

Update #3: Fitness Maintenance Update for auto-calculated Critical Power

We have updated our auto-calculated Critical Power tool to account for submaximal workouts. These submaximal efforts may not increase your fitness but they will maintain your fitness gained from maximal efforts

What does this mean for you?

This means that you do not need to continually do max effort runs in order to maintain your Critical Power. As long as you do submaximal work to complement your max effort runs, your Critical Power will be maintained.

What does this look like in practice?

Let’s say you ran a personal best 10K race two months ago. Your Critical Power increased after that effort. You are really happy with that result and you begin to train according to your new higher Critical Power.

After a month, your Critical Power will slowly decrease because the beneficial effects from that race will start to depreciate from your overall fitness. You take notice of your Critical Power beginning to decrease and you start to panic because you feel like your fitness is still excellent.

It would be unreasonable to try to replicate that personal best 10K effort again in order maintain your Critical Power because you would have to sign up for another race and taper again so you could race just as well as you did last time.

With this new update, it would not be necessary to replicate that personal best effort. As long as you complete a submaximal long run, that run will be enough to maintain your fitness gained from your personal best marathon effort and keep your Critical Power high.

Conclusion

This is the beginning of a series of Stryd updates coming this fall.

We now have full time Android and Connect IQ developers so you should anticipate updates coming to these platforms as quickly as updates came to iOS and the web in the past!

We have also been working hard to create more stock of the new Stryd. We expect that new orders will begin arriving to customers at the end of September. You should reserve your unit now if you would like to have Stryd to train with this fall. Click here to visit the Stryd store if you would like to place an order>>