Depending on your operating system, you may need to install the FTDI USB driver if you're using the PowerTap's new USB download cradle. The FTDI USB drivers are an optional install if you do not plan on downloading from your device using Golden Cheetah.

If you're running Linux, you may also need to uninstall the brtty (Braille TTY) application, as it interferes with FTDI's driver. The command

sudo apt-get remove brtty

The latest version (7.1.1) of Saris's PowerAgent software uses an incompatible version of FTDI's driver from the one GoldenCheetah uses, and PowerAgent removes the driver that GoldenCheetah needs when you install PowerAgent. If you want to run both GoldenCheetah and PowerAgent, you need to use PowerAgent version 7.0.1 or earlier. We're working to correct this problem, but we're not there yet.

Step 2: Installing GoldenCheetah

To install GoldenCheetah, go to the download page and download the version for your operating system and processor.

On Mac OS X, when the download finishes, Mac OS X should automatically open the .dmg file for you. If not, double-click to open it. Drag the GoldenCheetah icon into your Applications folder, and you're done.

The Linux version of GoldenCheetah is distributed as a tarball. Download this file and save it to /tmp, then from a terminal:

cd /tmp
tar xzvf GoldenCheetah_DATE_Linux_x86.tgz
cd GoldenCheetah_DATE_Linux_x86
sudo cp GoldenCheetah /usr/local/bin
cd ..
rm -rf GoldenCheetah_DATE_Linux_x86.tgz

Step 3: Running GoldenCheetah

To run GoldenCheetah on Mac OS X, double-click on the GoldenCheetah icon in your Applications folder. On Linux, just type "GoldenCheetah" at the prompt.

The first time you run GoldenCheetah, you'll get an empty "Choose a Cyclist" dialog box:

Click on "New...", enter your name and click "OK", then select your name and click "Open". After that, the main GoldenCheetah window will open:

Your main window won't yet have any rides in it, of course. To fix that, you need either to download a ride from your PowerTap or import one from another program. GoldenCheetah can import .srm files recorded on SRM power meters and .csv files created by other programs. To download a file from your PowerTap, select "Ride->Download from device..." from the menu. To import one, select either "Ride->Import from SRM..." or "Ride->Import from CSV...".

Once you've downloaded or imported a ride, you can see some simple statistics about it on the "Ride Summary" page: your total riding time and average power, for example. If you click on the "Ride Plot" tab at the top of the screen, you can see a graph of your speed, power, cadence, and heart rate during the ride. The "Power Histogram" shows how much time you spent at each power during the ride, and the "Notes" tab allows you to record notes about the ride. The "Weekly Summary" shows your total time and work for the week.

The "Critical Power Plot" is one of the most useful features of GoldenCheetah. It shows the highest average power you attained for every interval length during the ride. Some people call this the "Mean Maximal Power" graph. The green line shows values for this ride; the red line shows the combination of all your rides. (If you only have one ride so far, the two lines will overlap.) Clicking on the graph with your mouse brings up a blue line, and the values under this line are shown at the bottom of the screen.

It helps to think about an example:

In this example, the blue line is right around the 14-second mark on the x-axis. So the values shown under "Today" and "All Rides", at the bottom, are the hardest the cyclist went for any 14-second period during the ride itself and during all rides he's ever recorded in GoldenCheetah. Since the two values are the same, he set a new personal record during this ride.

The Critical Power Plot is most useful before you're going to go do intervals or a time trial. Say you want to do six 2-minute intervals with three minutes rest in between. Click on the Critical Power Plot, drag the blue line to the 2-minute mark, and read the value shown in "All Rides". That's the hardest you've ever gone for two minutes. Now go out and try to beat it!

Step 4: Setting Up Your Power Zones

If you look back at the screenshot above, you may notice that there are several things shown in the "Ride Summary" tab that aren't on your version. The picture above shows a non-zero "Bike Score", and there's a list of how much time the cyclist spent in each "Power Zone" during the ride as well.

BikeScore(TM) is a measure of the physiological stress you underwent during a ride. It was developed by Dr. Philip Skiba, and you can read more about it in an article he wrote.

For GoldenCheetah to compute your BikeScore and the time spent in each power zone, you first need to tell it what your power zones and critical power are. You can define your power zones however you like, maybe using the ones defined by Joe Friel, for example. Your critical power should be the maximum power you can sustain over an hour. Some people call this your "lactate threshold" or "functional threshold power". Our friend Bill says a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

We'll have a dialog box that will let you set up your power zones and critical power in a future version of GoldenCheetah, but for now you'll need to use a text editor. On Linux, that probably means nano, vi, or emacs. On Mac, the easiest editor to use is TextEdit, which is in your Applications folder.

Start by downloading this sample file and saving it in

~/Library/GoldenCheetah/Your Name/power.zones

where "~" is your home directory (e.g., /Users/srhea on Mac or /home/srhea on Linux) and "Your Name" is the name you chose when you first opened GoldenCheetah. Open the power.zones file in a text editor and you'll see this:

From BEGIN until 2006/07/17, CP=297:
  1, Active Recovery,     122, 167
  2, Endurance,           167, 228
  3, Tempo,               228, 274
  4, Lactate Threshold,   274, 319
  5, VO2 Max,             319, 365
  6, Anaerobic Capacity,  365, 678
  7, Sprinting,           678, MAX

From 2006/07/17 until 2007/02/05, CP=329:
  1, Active Recovery,     135, 185
  2, Endurance,           185, 253
  3, Tempo,               253, 303
  4, Lactate Threshold,   303, 354
  5, VO2 Max,             354, 404
  6, Anaerobic Capacity,  404, 752
  7, Sprinting,           752, MAX

From 2007/02/05 until END, CP=347:
  1, Active Recovery,     139, 191
  2, Endurance,           191, 260
  3, Tempo,               260, 312
  4, Lactate Threshold,   312, 364
  5, VO2 Max,             364, 416
  6, Anaerobic Capacity,  416, 774
  7, Sprinting,           774, MAX

The format of the file is simple. You define a range of time, starting with a date or "BEGIN" to indicate the oldest possible time and ending with a date or "END" to indicate the latest possible time. Then you put your critical power (CP) for that date range. Then you list your zones, where each zone has a number, a name, a minimum power value, and a maximum power value. You can have as many time ranges and zones as you like. Most people enter a new time range every time their critical power goes up--right after a fitness test, for example.

NOTE: By default, Mac OS's TextEdit will try and save the power.zones file with a .txt extension. Use the menu command "Format->Make Plain Text" to get it to let you save the file with a .zones extension instead.

Legacy Command-Line Tools

You can still build the older, command-line tools from the source code, but we no longer include them in releases. You can find documentation for them here.