Power & Pace Profiles: What Every Endurance Athlete Should Know
From The Athlete's Compass by Athletica
May 28, 2026 · 36 min · Episode 130
About this episode
The episode discusses power and pace profiles for endurance athletes, emphasizing the use of wearable data and AI coaching for performance improvement.
In this episode of The Athletes Compass Podcast , Paul Warloski, Dr. Paul Laursen, and Marjaana Rakai break down the concept of power and pace profiles — the personalized performance fingerprints hidden inside your training data. They explain how these profiles reveal an athlete’s strengths, weaknesses, critical power, and sustainable race pace without expensive lab testing. The conversation explores how Athletica uses real-world wearable data and AI coaching to prescribe training zones, assess race readiness, and predict event performance. From marathon pacing to hill-specific preparation and anaerobic profiling, the episode offers practical guidance for endurance athletes looking to train smarter and race more effectively. Key Takeaways A power or pace profile maps your best efforts across different durations and acts as a “performance fingerprint.” Critical power and critical pace help determine sustainable race intensity and training zones. Real-world wearable data may be more valuable than isolated lab testing because it reflects actual training environments. Athletica uses historical performance data to estimate physiological markers like VO2 max and threshold power…
People in this episode
Host: Paul Warloski
Guests: Dr. Paul Laursen, Marjaana Rakai
Topics covered
- endurance training
- power profiles
- pace profiles
- wearable data
- AI coaching
- race performance
Keywords
- endurance athlete
- training data
- critical power
- sustainable race pace
- AI coaching
- performance fingerprint
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Athletica
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