Foundations · put to workField Notes
Chapters 01 – 06, pulled together
The Foundations, put to work.
Chapters 01 to 06 covered the foundations. This page puts them in one place, and gives you a practical way to use them.
Two ways in
Name the week, or don't. Either way it gets read.
If you like structure
Name the week and FORM holds you to it.
A type, a target, a session proposed each morning against what your body said. Plan versus actual, every week.
If you just want to ride
Ride what you feel and read it after.
No plan to fall short of. FORM still names every ride, prices it, and tells you what the week added up to.
Same coach, same numbers. The only difference is how much you decide up front. What follows works either way.
The gap
You don't lack data or discipline. What's missing is a read.
Everyone will give you a plan, a chart or a thumbs up. Almost nobody looks at the riding you actually did and tells you what it meant.
01
No read
Charts and kudos, no opinion. All the data in the world and nothing that says what it means for tomorrow.
02
No memory
A plan doesn't look back. The bad night, the ride you cut short, the four hours on Saturday: tomorrow is unchanged.
03
No credit
The group ride is the biggest thing you do all week, and most tools file it like a coffee spin.
04
No arc
Fitness moves slowly. Without a way to see the arc, six good weeks feel the same as six wasted ones.
01
The mental load disappears.
You wake up and the numbers are already read. The coach lays out your options for the day and the reasoning behind each one. Hours of piecing things together so you can make a call. Now just make the call.
02
Yesterday counts.
Every ride you do lands in the numbers, planned or not. A missed session is a fact with a consequence, not a moral failure, and today already absorbed it. Nothing carries over as something you owe.
03
Every ride gets a name.
Group ride, commute, coffee spin, 4×8. Each one typed, sized and priced. The riding you actually do is the riding that counts.
04
The arc becomes visible.
Eight weeks of Fitness, the shape of each week, what your limiter is. Over months you aren't just fitter. You understand why.
The model
Three layers. One gate.
Here is how it all fits together. FORM does the hard work. You make the choices and do the riding. Game on.
The gate · every morning
Your body files a report.
HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, read against your own normal. It sets today's ceiling. Green opens everything. Amber caps at tempo. Red means easy, whatever the plan says.
Chapter 02
Layer 1
The ride
Engine · Ch 03
Which system it trained
Six engines, each with a fuel and a clock. Type.
Dose · Ch 04
How hard it hit
TSS against your own Fitness. Load, from Maintain to Overload.
Impact · Ch 05
The ride's name
Type × Load. What you hit, how hard. Priced in TSS, Chapter 01.
Layer 2
The week
Shape · Ch 06
Where the hours went
Easy, middle, hard. Mostly easy, sometimes fierce. The middle on purpose or not at all.
Cost · Ch 01
What the week cost
Every ride priced in TSS and added up. Fitness, Fatigue and Form fall out of the total.
Layer 3
The block
Block · Ch 05
A window, read as one thing
Pick any span of weeks. Which engines got the work, and how much.
Pattern · Ch 05
What you keep doing
One ride is a fact. Thirty is a pattern, and the pattern tells you everything.
The Foundations · ideas of Chapters 01 – 06
One line each. And what FORM does with it.
01
Every ride has a price.
TSS. One hour at threshold is 100. Add it up over 42 days and you get Fitness; over 7, Fatigue. Form is the gap.
In FORMFitness, Fatigue, Form on Home, every day, no typing.
02
Your body files a report.
HRV, RHR, sleep, against your own baseline. One low morning is noise. Three is a pattern.
In FORMReadiness caps every workout the coach proposes.
03
You have six engines.
Recovery to Sprint, each with a fuel and a clock. Your body doesn't know where the stimulus came from.
In FORMEvery ride is typed by the engine it trained.
04
Same ride, different impact.
Relative Load: TSS divided by your Fitness. The same route shrinks as you get stronger.
In FORMSix rungs, from Recovery to Overload, on every ride.
05
Every ride has a name.
Type × Load. "Was that a good ride?" finally has an answer. Mixed is not a shrug.
In FORMTraining Impact on every ride, block and pattern.
06
Mostly easy. Sometimes fierce.
80% easy, most of the rest hard, little between. The middle is the black hole.
In FORMThe week's shape, read against its phase.
The rhythm
What you actually do. Five habits.
Monday
Decide what the week is for.
Big hours, hard days, or a quiet one. Structure is optional, but knowing the intent makes everything after it readable.
Every morning
Read the report.
Green, amber or red. Today's ceiling. Then Readiness: Fitness, Fatigue and Form (CTL, ATL, TSB), how much you can carry and how fresh you are to carry it. The coach already has.
Every ride
Pick the engine and the dose.
Which system, how hard. Then ride it as written. Easy days easy.
Sunday
Look at the shape.
Mostly easy? Middle chosen, or drifted? Is that what you wanted to do?
Week four
Recover. Actually.
Half the load. This is where the fitness lands. Chapter 07 is where this gets planned properly.
None of this has to live in your head. That's FORM's job.
You plan, or you don't. You ride. FORM reads it and coaches. What's left is the part you really like: riding the bike, getting stronger, and understanding why you're getting stronger.
A human coach does this for the few who can afford one, or find one they like. FORM's promise is that discipline, attention and respect, every day, for anyone.
Field Notes · The Foundations, put to workStart at Chapter 01 →