Reading the post-race report

What's in the report

Open a finished race's recap (from the race dashboard, or /race/<id>/recap/). It assembles, in one place:

Your finish & splits: actual vs coach goal vs model prediction, with % deltas. Actual leg times come from the matched FIT(s), or you enter the official results (which then win).
Placement: age-group, gender and overall position of field size, plus a percentile (e.g. 52nd of 101 · top 51%).
Plan vs actual: power target vs achieved on the bike, pace targets on swim/run, goal speed, so you compare strategy, not just finish time.
Pacing: first/second-half power, pace, HR, cadence + Pa:HR decoupling and a verdict, per leg.
Terrain: power & speed by gradient (climb / flat / descent).
CdA (est.) vs your goal CdA on the bike, plus an aero position detail panel that breaks that single number down (see below).
Conditions: temperature (a leg's own, or the race's if a device didn't record it).
Athlete recap: the qualitative reflection (feel, what went right/wrong, lessons, fuelling, gear).

Everything exports to a clean PDF via Download PDF.

Reading the aero position detail

The bike leg's single CdA is a whole-ride average, and an average hides a lot: an athlete can be genuinely aero when the road is fast and then sit up for the last hour. The aero position detail panel (on the web card and in the PDF) opens that up, using the same analysis as the CdA calculator's FIT analyzer:

By position & speed — CdA split by terrain (flat ≤ 1%, transition 1–2%, climb 2–4%) and, on the flat, by speed band (≥ 24, 30, 35, 40 km/h), each with a median and a P25–P75 range. When they're actually moving fast, a well-drilled athlete's flat-and-fast bucket is low and tight; a fat or high bucket means time spent out of position. Thin buckets (under 30 samples) are marked — read them with caution.
The scatter — every solve-eligible second plotted as a dot, CdA against speed, coloured by terrain, with the flat P25–P75 band shaded and its median dashed. A tight cloud at race speed is a position held honestly; a smear reaching upward is repeated sitting up.
Through the ride — the leg is split into eighths of riding time, each with a median CdA and its gap versus the flat median. Slices running ≥ 0.02 m² over the flat median are flagged red: sat up, surged, or stuck in traffic. This is the when did position slip view — e.g. good early, drifting mid-ride, fully sat up in the final eighth before the run.

It shows up whenever the bike file has power, GPS, and enough clean riding. Aid-station stops and coasting are filtered out before the maths, so they thin a time-slice rather than distort the numbers. Treat it as an estimate: on the speed buckets a tailwind stretch can read as "free" aero, so pair it with what you know about race day.

Filling in official results

Anyone (athlete or coach) can enter official splits + placements on the recap form, these override the FIT-derived estimates. A large gap between the official time and the FIT-derived time usually means the activity was over-trimmed: see Trimming.

Warm-ups don't count as a race leg

If you recorded a race-morning warm-up as its own activity, open it and tap Mark warm-up (see the activity page) so the report doesn't mistake it for your swim/bike/run leg — it picks your real effort instead. Very short swims are auto-suggested for you.

A note on "match burn" (W′)

W′ is your anaerobic "battery". It recharges whenever you drop below CP, so the total above-CP work over a long race can exceed your battery, that isn't an error. Read the lowest balance % (which already accounts for recovery), not the gross total. If the figures look off the report flags uncalibrated CP/W′: set measured thresholds for a meaningful read.