Occupation: Professional Cyclist

“In racing, stage races in particular, ithlete gives me the confidence to race hard when my HRV is still relatively high, despite being on day 4/5/6 of the race.”

I am a full time cyclist with the An Post-ChainReactionCycles-Sean Kelly Team. My goals for this year are the An post Ras stage race in May and the Irish Championships in June.

Since I started using there have been a number of personal achievements, but my favourites have to be;

• Getting a top 10 in the Irish Championships
• Being selected for the Irish Team for the Elite World Championships
• Top 10 in a UCI 1.2 Pro Race in Belgium (8th position)
• Winning the Most Aggressive Rider Award in a stage of the Tour of Britain
• Podium places in a number of Belgian elite races

Before using ithlete, I didn’t calculate my rest and recovery time accurately and basically I just guessed, going off feeling more than anything else. The managers at my team always press on us how important it is to monitor resting heart rate and then I read an article in Cycling Weekly Magazine about heart rate variability and ithlete.

I was immediately interested in the ithlete after reading the article, but at that time i didn’t have a compatible phone. As soon as I got an iPhone I got ithlete to help me with my training and recovery.

When I first started using the ithlete the key thing I noticed was how HRV corresponded with my training results. On days when my HRV was very low i struggled to complete the session or the training lacked real quality. As a professional cyclist I train for 20-27 hours per week so it is essential I am getting the most from every session.

I’ve been using ithlete for over a year now and use the app as a guide to weather i should train or take a rest day/extra recovery day. In racing, stage races in particular, ithlete gives me the confidence to race hard when my HRV is still relatively high, despite being on day 4/5/6 of the race.

I always (where possible) base my daily training decisions on my ithlete HRV score. I believe ithlete helped me achieve a lot of my goals last year, it helped me really dial in my training and recovery which as a result directly impacted my performances.

What do I like best about ithlete? Easy, how it can tell me, so simply in less than a minute, exactly how recovered i am from the previous days efforts!