January 14, 2026 · 3 min read

5 Numbers to Check Right After Downloading Your .FIT File

Your .FIT file is downloaded, the ride is over — now what? Instead of scrolling through the whole graph, check these five numbers. In 30 seconds they'll tell you what the workout really looked like, regardless of what memory suggests.

1. Normalized Power (NP), not just average power

Average power lies during variable effort — climbs, descents, gaps in pedalling artificially lower it. NP better reflects the real physiological cost of the ride. A big gap between average power and NP means a very uneven ride (attacks, breaks); a small one means a steady pace. We explained exactly what this metric calculates in our article on weighted average power.

2. The ride's TSS

One number that tells you how much load you just added to your week. Without it, it's hard to judge whether tomorrow should be hard or easy. Check right away whether the TSS matches the intensity you'd planned for this ride.

3. Intensity Factor (IF)

NP divided by FTP — it tells you what fraction of your threshold you actually rode. IF close to 1.0 is a threshold ride, below 0.7 is an easy base ride. A quick way to check whether the ride hit its planned intensity zone, without analysing the whole graph.

4. Heart-rate drift relative to power

If your heart rate rises in the second half of the ride at the same power, that's a sign of fatigue, dehydration or too high a temperature. Clear drift on a ride that was supposed to be "easy" is a sign that recovery is going worse than it seems.

5. Time in your target zone

Not just the average power for the whole ride, but how many minutes you actually spent in the zone you meant to train. A threshold interval full of gaps, where power dropped below target for half the time, gives a much smaller stimulus than its raw length suggests.

Why this is faster than reading the whole graph

These five numbers take up less space than a single glance at the power graph, yet say more about the quality of a workout than distance or average speed. If you're wondering which of these indicators to track long-term and which to check only right after a ride, see our article on cycling minimalism.

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