You have been training consistently.
You are riding four or five days each week.
You are doing your intervals.
You are strength training.
You are fueling better.
And your FTP hasn’t changed.
So, is your gravel cycling training actually working?
This is one of the most common questions I hear from the everyday gravel athletes I coach.
We have access to more training data than ever.
- Power.
- Heart rate.
- HRV.
- Training Stress Score.
- Fitness.
- Fatigue.
- Form.
- Sleep and recovery scores.
The problem isn’t a lack of information.
The problem is understanding which numbers actually matter.
Gravel cycling training progress rarely shows up in one dramatic metric.
More often, progress is a collection of small changes.
The same power feels easier.
Your heart rate is lower during an endurance ride.
You can ride longer without fading.
Your heart rate doesn’t drift as much late in a long ride.
You recover faster between workouts.
You lift more weight.
You finish a four-hour gravel ride tired instead of destroyed.
Those are all signs your training is working.
The best way to measure gravel cycling training progress is to combine objective metrics like power, heart rate, and TrainingPeaks and Athletica data with subjective measures such as perceived effort, recovery, and how you feel during long rides.
Stop Using FTP as Your Only Measure of Cycling Progress
FTP (Functional Threshold Power) is useful.
I use FTP to set training zones and monitor changes in cycling performance.
But FTP is not a complete measure of gravel cycling fitness.
Imagine two riders who both have an FTP of 250 watts.
One can ride at 175 watts for two hours before heart rate climbs and power starts to fade.
The other can ride at 175 watts for five hours with relatively stable heart rate and power.
They have the same FTP.
They are not the same gravel cyclist.
For long gravel events, durability matters.
Your ability to maintain power, movement quality, fueling, and concentration after several hours of riding is a major part of performance.
I don’t just want to know your best 20-minute power.
I want to know what happens during hour four.
That is often where gravel fitness shows up.
Compare Similar Workouts Over Time
One of the simplest ways to monitor gravel cycling training progress is to compare similar workouts.
I might compare several two-hour Zone 2 rides.
What was the athlete’s average power?
What was their Normalized Power?
What was their average heart rate?
How did the ride feel?
What happened during the final hour?
If an athlete rode at 160 watts with an average heart rate of 140 beats per minute in April and can ride at 170 watts with an average heart rate of 136 in June, something has positively changed.
But I also want to know how the ride felt.
Maybe the April ride was an RPE of 6 out of 10.
The June ride was a 3.
The numbers tell us what happened.
The athlete helps us understand what the numbers mean.
A Lower Heart Rate Can Show Aerobic Progress
A lower heart rate at the same power can be a sign of improved aerobic efficiency.
But we need context.
Heart rate is affected by heat, hydration, caffeine, sleep, stress, illness, and fatigue.
A lower heart rate isn’t automatically better.
A suppressed heart rate combined with heavy legs and unusually high perceived exertion may be a sign of fatigue.
That is why I rarely make coaching decisions based on one ride.
I look for trends.
Are you consistently producing more power at the same heart rate?
Does endurance pace feel easier?
Is your heart rate more stable during long rides?
Are you recovering normally?
When several things move in the same direction, we can be more confident that fitness is improving.
Use Efficiency Factor to Monitor Aerobic Fitness
One useful TrainingPeaks and Athletica metric is Efficiency Factor, or EF.
For cycling, EF compares Normalized Power with average heart rate.
In simple terms, we are looking at how much cycling output you produce relative to cardiovascular effort.
A rising EF during similar steady endurance rides may indicate improving aerobic fitness.
The key word is similar.
Don’t compare a cool two-hour road ride with a five-hour gravel race in 90-degree heat.
Compare endurance rides with endurance rides.
Look at trends across several weeks.
Your FTP may still be 250 watts.
But if you are producing more aerobic power at a lower cardiovascular cost, your training is doing something.
Watch Heart Rate Drift During Long Gravel Rides
Another useful metric is aerobic decoupling.
In TrainingPeaks, cyclists may see this listed as Pw:Hr.
In Athletica, it’s simply called aerobic decoupling.
Imagine riding steadily at 170 watts.
During the first hour, your heart rate averages 130.
Several hours later, you are still riding at approximately 170 watts, but your heart rate has climbed significantly.
Your power hasn’t changed much.
The cardiovascular cost of your ride has.
As aerobic endurance improves, we generally want the relationship between power and heart rate to remain more stable during steady endurance rides.
But context matters.
Heat, dehydration, poor fueling, and technical terrain can all affect heart rate and power.
I don’t simply look at the decoupling number and declare a workout good or bad.
I look at the ride.
I look at the conditions.
I look at the athlete’s comments.
Then we decide what the number means.
Fitness Is Really Training Load
This is an important distinction.
TrainingPeaks and Athletica label Chronic Training Load, or CTL, as Fitness.
Fitness helps us understand accumulated training stress over time.
A rising Fitness number generally tells me an athlete has been consistently accumulating training load.
It does not automatically tell me the athlete is getting faster.
You can accumulate a lot of training stress and still train poorly.
You can ride too hard too often.
You can underfuel.
You can skip recovery.
You can create an impressive-looking Fitness chart while becoming increasingly exhausted.
As a coach, I use CTL to understand training consistency and load.
I don’t use it as a performance score.
The better question is whether the training load is appropriate for the athlete and the gravel event they are preparing for.
Fitness, Fatigue, and Form Tell a Training Story
The Performance Management Chart tracks Fitness, Fatigue, and Form.
I use these numbers to understand the general rhythm of an athlete’s training.
Are we gradually building training load?
Did we just complete a difficult training block?
Is fatigue accumulating?
Are we reducing training before an important gravel race?
These numbers help tell the training story.
But I never want an athlete chasing a Fitness number.
And I don’t want an athlete panicking because their Form is negative.
During a productive training block, some fatigue is expected.
Training metrics should create questions.
They shouldn’t automatically create answers.
Track Strength Training Progress
Gravel cyclists sometimes forget to monitor progress in the gym.
Are you lifting more weight?
Can you complete more repetitions with the same weight?
Is your technique better?
Do single-leg exercises feel more stable?
Do you recover faster from strength workouts?
Those are all signs of progress.
I also want to know how that strength transfers to the bike.
Can you maintain your riding position longer?
Do your shoulders and back feel better after four hours?
Can you repeatedly push over short, steep hills?
Do you feel stronger late in a gravel race?
The goal isn’t to become a competitive weightlifter.
The goal is to become a stronger and more durable gravel cyclist.
Your Long Ride Is One of Your Best Fitness Tests
You don’t always need a formal FTP test to measure progress.
Your regular long ride can tell us a lot.
What happened to your power during the final hour?
What happened to heart rate?
Did cadence change?
Did you stop fueling?
Did perceived exertion suddenly increase?
How did you feel the next morning?
One of my favorite signs of progress is when an athlete finishes a long ride and says, “I probably could have kept going.”
That doesn’t create an impressive chart.
But for an athlete preparing for a 100-mile gravel race, it is extremely meaningful.
Durability is developing.
How Your Training Feels Is Data
This may be the most underused training metric.
How did the workout feel?
That is why I ask my athletes to leave comments in their workouts.
“Fine” isn’t particularly useful.
Tell me about your legs.
Tell me about your breathing.
Tell me when the intervals became difficult.
Tell me if your motivation was unusually low.
Tell me if your heart rate seemed strange.
Tell me if the workout felt surprisingly easy.
A workout prescribed at 200 watts that felt like an RPE of 7 in April and an RPE of 4 in June tells us something.
The power didn’t change.
The athlete did.
This is where coaching becomes more than putting workouts on a calendar.
My job is to support athletes and help them understand how they are responding to training.
The athlete provides the sensations.
The training platform provides the numbers.
I help connect the two.
Look for Small Signs of Gravel Cycling Training Progress
The biggest mistake athletes make is waiting for one giant sign that training is working.
They want a 30-watt FTP increase.
They want a new Strava PR.
They want their Garmin to announce that their VO2max increased.
Real progress is usually quieter.
- Your endurance power increases by five watts.
- Your average heart rate drops three beats per minute.
- Your aerobic decoupling improves.
- Your long ride feels easier.
- You lift more weight.
- You recover faster from intervals.
- You fuel consistently for five hours.
- You stay focused late in a race.
- You don’t fall apart on the final climb.
- Your Efficiency Factor improves.
One metric might not mean much.
Ten small improvements tell a story.
The goal of training isn’t to create prettier charts.
The goal is to prepare you for what you want to do.
Your training data should help us understand whether you are moving toward that goal.
The best training decisions happen when we combine power, heart rate, training load, strength progress, and your own sensations.
That is how we see progress.
Progress isn’t one big breakthrough. It’s a collection of small improvements that tell the story of your training.
Three Things You Should Know About Monitoring Gravel Cycling Training Progress
- Progress is more than FTP: Lower heart rate at the same power, better durability, increased strength, and easier perceived effort can all show that your gravel training is working.
- Compare trends instead of individual workouts: Efficiency Factor, aerobic decoupling, training load, and heart rate become more useful when you compare similar rides across weeks and months.
- How you feel is training data: Power and heart rate tell us what happened, but your sensations, fatigue, recovery, and perceived effort help your coach understand what the numbers mean.
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Paul Warloski is a:
- USA Cycling Level 1 Advanced Certified Coach
- RRCA Running Coach
- Training Peaks Level 2 Coach
- RYT-200 Yoga Instructor
- Certified Personal Trainer
- Certified Nutrition Advisor
