Glossary. lossary.

A running fitness index computed from your race times (Jack Daniels' method). The higher, the faster. Kimbia uses it to derive all your training paces. It's the scientific cousin of MAS.

Maximal Aerobic Speed - the speed at which your oxygen uptake plateaus. It's the everyday term in French running clubs. Kimbia shows the VDOT ↔ MAS equivalence so everyone finds their bearings.

A portion of an activity: a kilometre, an interval rep, a track lap. Kimbia keeps it exactly as your watch cut it, and calls it a "lap" throughout the app - it is the row in the per-lap detail.

Effort measured in watts by a power meter (crank, pedals, or watch/pod for running). Unlike speed or HR it reacts instantly and doesn't depend on wind, gradient, or cardiac fatigue: it is the most objective measure of intensity. Kimbia draws the curve whenever the activity carries watts - including the ones a service estimated from pace, which no sensor ever measured.

Functional Threshold Power - the highest average power you can hold for about an hour. It's the reference that turns raw watts into personal training zones (like max HR for heart-rate zones). Estimate it with a 20-min test (≈ 95% of the average) or a ramp test.

Power relative to your body weight: your watts divided by your kilos. It's what matters on climbs and for comparing athletes of different sizes (400 W weighs more on 60 kg than on 90 kg). Kimbia computes it as soon as you enter a weight and an FTP.

The chart's “Smooth” slider removes GPS and sensor noise so the trend stands out. τ is the filter's half-window: each point is combined with its τ neighbours on each side (median then a light mean, to keep transitions sharp). The equivalent in seconds shows next to the slider - it depends on the activity's duration. τ=0 shows the raw data.

The rise in your heart rate at constant effort: average HR over the last 30 % of the analysis window against the first 30 %. The window keeps only the work laps, stitched end to end, and starts at the steady-state onset - the head of an effort measures the cardiac ramp, not the athlete, and recoveries would drag everything down. It rises with heat, dehydration and fatigue. Under 5 % the aerobic execution is stable; past 10 % the session was very hard, very hot, or misclassified. In the per-lap detail, the "Drift" column applies the same idea inside each lap.

The twin of HR drift, in pace: your pace over the last 30 % against the first 30 %, as a percentage (positive = you slowed down). Same bounds, same blocks, same window - the two read as a pair. In the per-lap detail, the column applies the same idea inside each lap: it says whether you held or blew up on a rep, where the lap average hides the damage.

The label Kimbia assigns to each lap from its intensity and place in the session: warm-up, ramp-up, work, recovery, ramp-down, cool-down, and "paused" when the watch was stopped. It lets Kimbia isolate the work block - what surrounds it counts in no analysis. You can correct it by hand.

The Borg CR10 scale: 1 very easy, 10 maximal. Foster showed that a single rating given within half an hour of the effort, multiplied by duration, makes a training load as reliable as heart-rate methods - no sensor required. The rating absorbs what heart rate misses: heat, sleep, stress, soreness. On Kimbia, the RPE prices the session (RPE × minutes) and the feeling colours the curve with your morale; the journal marks sessions still waiting for their rating with a red dot.

What a session cost you, as one number. Kimbia keeps three, because none is enough alone. The first comes from the heart, the HR effort: hours, times the square of intensity, times 100. Intensity is your heart rate above rest, against your threshold above rest. An hour at threshold is 100. Without a strap, or for a session you only planned, the pace is translated into what your heart usually pays for it, so the plan and the run compare on equal terms. The second comes from the watch, the Pace effort: the same formula, with your pace against your threshold pace and nothing from the heart. It is what was asked. The third comes from you, the RPE effort: your rating times the minutes. That day's load is the sum of the sessions you did, on whichever thermometer is drawn. The HR and Pace efforts convert nothing: squaring the intensity already prices a ride by what was ridden, and you can give each sport its own max HR. The RPE effort has no denominator at all - a 3 is a 3, on a bike as on foot - so one hour of running weighs there as much as two and a half hours of riding. It is the only place in Kimbia where one sport is converted into another. On the Load chart, HR effort draws in black, Pace effort in slate, and the RPE effort line carries one extra signal: its colour is your morale, green through good stretches, crimson through rough ones.

Your max minus your resting rate. An intensity read on the reserve is your heart rate above rest, against your threshold above rest. Your zones are cut on it, and so is the HR effort. Without it, a jog at 120 already reads 75 % of threshold, because the heart never goes under 35; and an hour at threshold costs only 1.4 times an easy hour, where your rating says 2.3. On the reserve it costs 1.8. One more effect: with the rest taken out, the heart and the legs nearly agree. When the pace covers 90 % of the way to threshold, so does the heart.

The third thermometer. Hours, times the square of your pace against your threshold pace, times 100, counting only the moments you were moving. An hour at threshold pace is 100. Nothing from the heart in it, and that is what makes it useful: it does not know whether it was hot, whether you had slept, whether you were cooked. A plan is written in pace, so this is the number it predicts best. And beside the HR effort, it says whether your heart paid more than the pace asked. It is missing when there is no speed to read (indoors, no GPS) or no threshold pace yet. On a bike the speed is the terrain - a descent, a wheel, a headwind - not the legs, so it reads your power against your FTP - the meter's when you have one, otherwise the power the ride's own physics demanded (grade, mass, air). It used to be estimated from your heart: that was the HR effort repainted, with no gap to read between the two. No ride factor on either, nor on the HR effort: squaring the intensity already prices the ride by what was ridden. Only the RPE effort carries one, because a rating has no denominator of its own.

The thermometers share no unit, and no common order of magnitude either. To read them together each is scaled to its own average over the range shown: ×1 is your normal, ×1.3 a third busier. Change the range and the reference is recomputed. What matters is not the level but the gap. When the HR effort curve runs above the RPE effort one, your sessions cost your cardio more than they cost your perception; the other way round means you were taking badly a load your heart found ordinary. When it runs above the Pace effort, your heart paid more than the pace asked: heat, fatigue, terrain. Averaging the three would erase exactly those disagreements.

Each fitness curve scaled to its average over the range, then the feeling minus the heart. Past 0.15 either way, Kimbia says it in one sentence: body ahead, or heart ahead. Both thermometers have to be fed, or there is nothing to compare. On the Load chart it is the gap between the two lines. In the week in numbers, and for a coach, it is the sentence.

A rolling average of your daily training load over roughly six weeks, weighted so recent days count more. It moves slowly, which is the point: it tells you what your body has actually absorbed, not what you did yesterday. Read it against your own best - the highest it reached in the last twelve months - rather than against anybody else's number.

The 42-day average minus the 7-day one, at the end of the day. Positive after an easy stretch, negative in the middle of a block. Kimbia does not draw it, on purpose: on a real season, the curve is highest during the lay-off, when fatigue drops faster than fitness. The moment it looks best is the moment you trained least. Read as a number, with fitness beside it, it says what it means: fresh and fit is race week; fresh and unfit is a holiday.

Your load per day over the last 7 days, divided by your load per day over the last 28. Between 0.8 and 1.3 you are training in the zone your body was prepared for. Past 1.5, in the field studies, injuries double or quadruple. Kimbia computes it on every thermometer, and on planned weeks too: it is the number to keep in its zone before prescribing anything.

Monotony is your mean daily load divided by its spread over the week. Above 2, the week is one day repeated. Strain is the week's load times its monotony. In Foster's study, the strain spikes came before most illnesses and slumps. A week of identical days has no spread: Kimbia shows nothing rather than an infinite figure. Both are computed on planned weeks too, to vary a plan before living it.

Your sessions rated 6 or more, over all your rated sessions, per week. Read against 80 / 20. A week where half the sessions are hard is a week you will not absorb. Counted on your ratings, so it needs them.