Glossary: Required Critical Power/Required Critical Pace
The “Required Critical Power” (or Pace) is the Critical Power at which the available capacity (W'bal) just drops to 0% during the activity. It is therefore the minimum CP required for an athlete to complete the activity.
The critical power / pace model not only provides a measure of an athlete's performance with the CP metric, but also a second important metric with W' or Wprime as “(work) capacity”. In the formula CP(t) = CP + W'/t, capacity determines the hyperbolic relationship between power output and the time it can be sustained. On the other hand, with the W'-balance (W'bal for short), it provides a value for how much of this capacity is still available at each point in time of an activity.
Runalyze can also display the average and minimum W'bal during an activity. Min. W'bal gives an indication of how close you were to the maximum load.
The “Required Critical Power / Pace” metric looks at this model from the other side: What is the minimum CP that an athlete must have in order to complete this activity? In order to determine this minimum, W' is set at W' = CP * 50.
If a reference duration is defined (here: 30 minutes), a Critical Pace can also be assigned to an Effective VO2max. This also results in a “Required Eff. VO2max” for running activities.
See also
References
- Skiba, P.F., Chidnok, W., Vanhatalo, A., Jones, A.M.: Modeling the expenditure and reconstitution of work capacity above critical power. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012 Aug; 44(8):1526-32., doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3182517a80
- Goossens, A.: Comparison of W’balance algorithms, 2018
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