Tried out Magic Buckets for the first time last night on the trainer last. It took a few minutes to get used to it but I was able to get fill the low, HIE, and peak buckets 100%. That’s the first time I’ve ever been able meet the planner goal so precisely.
I have a question about the Garmin app that isn’t mentioned in the blog post. There are two arcs at the top of the app. The inner one is the power but I don’t see it explained what the outer arc is. There is a lot of information crammed into that section of the screen.
The request I have is related to the colours. I rode in the evening and Garmin was screen was in night mode. I found the white numbers in the buckets at bottom difficult to read. The white numbers were fine aganist the black screen but as the buckets filled it was hard to read it against the colours, especially yellow bucket. Maybe the numbers could be changed to white with black outlines?
Next video that will be published on the YT channel will talk about the Magic Buckets UI and - more importantly - how to use that information for your training.
The outer arc actually represents your real-time High Intensity Energy. As you ride above threshold, you use up your HIE (which also causes your MPA to decline) and as you ride below threshold, your HIE is replenished. The further above (below) TP you ride, the faster HIE is depleted (replenished, respectively).
Interestingly the “Challenge Levels” for Magic Intervals are based on that Arc. I’ll get into that in the video. Might be a bit too much to type here
I agree the numbers for the buckets are hard to read. Especially hard in night mode and agree the high bucket is the hardest to see. Not sure how much it can be tweaked in the limited real estate.
The outer arc represents HIE. As you ride harder than TP, you drain your High Intensity Energy. The light grey is how much you’ve depleted. You don’t have to deplete it all to get a Breakthrough. We’ve added a dark grey sector to the left side of the outer arc. This is the Breakthrough HIE depletion level that defines a Breakthrough. When the light grey hits the dark grey, you are at a Breakthrough.
Your Challenge Level is defined to be how close the light grey is to the dark grey. CL=1 means you are 10% there. CL=10 means you hit the dark grey. In the image below, CL=6.0 and we are 60% to a BT. BTW, we use HIE rather than MPA, since HIE is a linear progression (MPA is an exponential).
