HOW TO SET UP YOUR CYCLING HEAD UNIT DATA SCREENS FOR EVERY RIDE TYPE

I spent the first two years of riding with a power meter using one data screen. Eight fields, crammed together, same layout for every ride. Sunday spin with mates. Tuesday interval session. Saturday sportive. Same screen. I thought I was being thorough. I was being lazy.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about head unit data: more fields does not mean more information. It means more noise. And the difference between a useful screen and a cluttered one is not how much data you can fit — it's whether the data you're showing matches what you actually need to decide right now, on this ride, in this moment.

I changed my own setup after a conversation on the podcast about cognitive load during hard efforts. The idea was simple: when you're at threshold or above, you can process maybe two or three numbers. Not eight. Three. Everything else is furniture. So I stripped my screens back, built purpose-specific pages, and the quality of my riding sessions improved almost immediately — not because my fitness changed, but because I stopped looking at irrelevant numbers and started responding to the right ones.

This guide covers how to do the same thing. Four purpose-built screens for four ride types, the Garmin versus Wahoo differences in how you set them up, and why the smartest coaches in cycling keep telling their athletes to look at less.

In this guide:

• Why one screen fails you
• The endurance ride screen
• The interval screen
• The climbing screen
• The race and sportive screen
• Garmin vs Wahoo: how each handles data screens
• Vanity metrics vs actionable metrics
• The case for fewer fields
• How to set yours up this week

Why One Screen Fails You

The problem is straightforward. Different ride types have different objectives, and different objectives demand different information.

On an endurance ride, the single most important thing is staying in Zone 2. That means heart rate is your primary metric. Power matters too — it's how you keep the effort honest — but heart rate is the guardrail. You don't need to see 3-second power. You don't need lap time. You definitely don't need gradient or TSS mid-ride when the whole point is to keep things easy and accumulate time.

On an interval session, everything flips. Heart rate is now a lagging indicator — it takes 30 to 60 seconds to respond to a change in effort, which makes it almost useless for pacing a 4-minute VO2max interval. What you need is instantaneous power feedback. Three-second power. Lap power. Lap time counting down or up. Heart rate still belongs on the screen, but it drops from the primary slot to a secondary one — it tells you about accumulated fatigue across the set, not about the interval you're in right now.

Climbing demands gradient awareness and VAM (vertical ascent metres per hour). Racing demands normalised power, intensity factor and a running TSS estimate so you know how much you've spent and how much you've got left.

One screen cannot do all four of those jobs. It's like wearing the same pair of shoes for running, hiking and a wedding. Technically possible. Practically stupid.

The Endurance Ride Screen

This is your Zone 2 screen. The goal of the ride is to accumulate aerobic volume at a controlled intensity. Everything on this screen should serve that single purpose.

Four fields. That's it.

1. Heart rate — the primary intensity governor. On an endurance ride, heart rate is more useful than power because it accounts for fatigue, heat, hydration and all the other variables that shift your body's response to a given wattage. If your Zone 2 ceiling is 140bpm and you're sitting at 145 after two hours, that's drift — it's information you need to see immediately, not buried in a corner behind six other numbers.

2. Elapsed time — endurance rides are time-based, not distance-based. You're aiming for three hours or four hours, not 100 kilometres. Distance is a byproduct. Time is the prescription.

3. Distance — useful for logistics (knowing when to turn around, knowing how far from home you are) rather than training load. It earns a spot because it's practical, not because it's physiologically important.

4. Normalised power — this is your post-ride sanity check running in real time. On a hilly endurance ride, your average power will understate the actual training cost because of the coasting on descents. NP corrects for that. If your endurance target is 180 watts and your NP is reading 210 after the first hour, you're going too hard regardless of what your average power says.

What I deliberately leave off this screen: speed (irrelevant on an endurance ride — it changes with wind and gradient and tells you nothing about intensity), cadence (unless you're specifically working on pedalling efficiency, it's a distraction), and TSS (you don't need to manage your stress score during an easy ride; check it afterwards).

Joe Friel has said repeatedly, across multiple editions of The Cyclist's Training Bible and on the podcast, that the single biggest mistake age-group cyclists make is riding their easy days too hard. A clean endurance screen with heart rate front and centre is the simplest fix for that. If the number you can't avoid looking at is heart rate, you will subconsciously regulate to it. That's the point.

The Interval Screen

This is where most default data screens fall apart completely. An interval session demands near-real-time power feedback, and most riders are staring at a field that says "Avg Power" — which includes the warm-up, the recovery valleys, and every second of soft pedalling between efforts. That number is useless during the work portion.

Four fields, structured for execution:

1. 3-second power — the closest thing to real-time you'll get on most head units. Instant power (1-second) is too jumpy to read; it bounces 50 watts every pedal stroke. The 3-second smoothing gives you a responsive but readable number. This goes in the biggest field on the screen, ideally top-centre where your eyes land naturally.

2. Lap power — this is the average power for the current lap, and it's the number that actually tells you whether you're hitting your interval target. If the prescription is 4 minutes at 300 watts and your lap power reads 285 after 90 seconds, you know immediately that you need to push up. If it reads 320, you know you went out too hard and need to settle. Lap power is the execution metric. Three-second power is the pacing metric. They work as a pair.

3. Lap time — you need to know how long you've been in this interval and, depending on how you set up your laps, how long is left. Some riders prefer elapsed lap time counting up; others prefer a countdown. Either works, as long as it's on the screen. Watching the clock is part of the mental game of hard efforts — knowing you're 3 minutes into a 5-minute effort changes how you manage the pain.

4. Heart rate — secondary on this screen, but still valuable. Heart rate across a set of intervals tells you about cumulative fatigue. If your heart rate at the end of the fourth interval is 10 beats higher than it was at the end of the first interval for the same power, your body is accumulating cost. That's normal, but it's the signal that tells you whether the fifth interval will be productive or destructive.

The auto-lap trap. For this screen to work properly, you need to be pressing the lap button at the start and end of each interval — or using a structured workout that triggers laps automatically. If you're relying on distance-based auto-laps (every 5km, say), your lap power and lap time fields will be meaningless for intervals because they'll be averaging across work and rest together. Garmin and Wahoo both support manual laps or workout-triggered laps. Use them.

Dan Lorang, who coached Jan Frodeno and coached at BORA-hansgrohe, has talked publicly about how he structures the information his athletes see during hard sessions. The principle is the same one: show the athlete the two or three numbers they need to execute the effort correctly, and hide everything else. He doesn't want a rider doing a threshold block to be distracted by their accumulated distance or their average speed for the day. Those numbers are irrelevant to the task at hand.

The Climbing Screen

Climbing is the one context where gradient and VAM earn their place on a data screen. On flat or rolling terrain, neither number adds anything useful. On a 20-minute climb, they're properly informative.

Four fields:

1. Gradient (%) — tells you what the road is about to demand. Gradient reads slightly ahead of your current position on most GPS units because the elevation data is smoothed. Knowing you're about to hit 10% lets you pre-empt the gear shift and the effort adjustment rather than reacting after you've already bogged down. On long, variable climbs — something like the Stelvio or even a local hill with sections that kick up — gradient is the field that stops you blowing up on the steep bit because you didn't see it coming.

2. VAM (vertical ascent metres per hour) — this is the climbing equivalent of normalised power. It tells you how fast you're actually going uphill, stripped of the horizontal distance that flattens your speed reading. A VAM of 1,000 m/hr is roughly what a decent amateur holds on a steady climb. A VAM of 1,200 m/hr is very strong. World Tour climbers sit around 1,600-1,800. Having this number on screen gives you a pacing reference that's specific to climbing — your flat-road speed is meaningless on an 8% gradient, but VAM isn't.

3. Power — on a sustained climb, regular average power or 3-second power both work. The effort is steady enough that there's less variability than on flat terrain, so even a simple average holds up. I prefer 10-second power here because climbs have enough micro-variations (gradient changes, corners, headwinds at switchbacks) that 3-second power can still bounce around.

4. Heart rate — the fatigue integrator. On a 30-minute climb, heart rate will drift upward even at constant power. Watching that drift tells you whether you're pacing sustainably or slowly burying yourself. If your heart rate is at 92% of max halfway up a climb you expected to take 40 minutes, you're in trouble and the power needs to drop.

What stays off this screen: distance (you care about the top, not the distance), speed (meaningless on a steep climb — 12 km/h at 10% and 30 km/h on the flat are completely different efforts), and elapsed time (unless you're targeting a specific climb time, which most training rides aren't).

If you ride in seriously mountainous terrain regularly, this screen earns its permanent place in your rotation. If you live somewhere flat and only encounter proper climbs a few times a year, build the screen anyway — you'll want it when you travel to the Alps, the Dolomites, or the Pyrenees, and you won't want to be fiddling with settings at the foot of a climb.

The Race and Sportive Screen

The race screen is fundamentally different from the other three because you're managing a budget. You have a finite amount of energy, and the screen needs to tell you how much you're spending and how much is left.

Four fields, all budget-focused:

1. Normalised Power (NP) — this is your running spend rate. In a road race or a sportive, the effort is inherently variable — surges, climbs, drafting, descents. Average power understates the cost of that variability. NP tells you the truth. If your target for a 4-hour sportive is an NP of 200 watts and you're reading 220 after the first hour because you got caught up in the early pace, you now know you're overspending and have three hours to pay for it.

2. Intensity Factor (IF) — NP divided by your FTP, expressed as a decimal. This is the number that tells you whether you're racing at a sustainable pace for the distance. An IF of 0.70-0.75 is sustainable for a very long day. An IF of 0.80-0.85 is sustainable for 3-4 hours if you're well fuelled. An IF above 0.90 for an event longer than 90 minutes means you're going to fade, full stop. IF is the governor field. It's the number that stops you from going out too hard.

3. TSS (running estimate) — your accumulated spend so far. Most Garmin units can display a running TSS estimate during a ride. This matters for pacing strategy because you know, from experience and from training data, roughly what TSS you can tolerate before you start to crack. If you know you start to struggle above 250 TSS, and your head unit reads 200 with 90 minutes still to go, you can do the maths and adjust accordingly.

4. Time of day or time remaining — this is practical rather than physiological. In a sportive, you need to know what time it is for feed stations, for cutoff times, for estimating your finish. In a race, elapsed time or race time matters for tactical decisions. Either version works; pick the one that matches your event type.

What stays off: heart rate (in a race context, heart rate is high and stays high — it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know from the effort in your legs), speed (controlled by the group and the terrain, not by you), and cadence.

The TSS-budget approach to pacing a long event is one of the most practical applications of training data that exists. Joe Friel popularised it in his writing on long-course triathlon, and it translates directly to cycling sportives and road races. The principle is simple: you know your TSS tolerance from training. The event has a predictable duration. Divide the budget across the time, pace to stay on budget, and you'll finish strong instead of crawling home.

Garmin vs Wahoo: How Each Handles Data Screens

Both platforms let you build purpose-specific screens. The menu structure is different, and the flexibility varies.

Garmin

Garmin is the more flexible platform for multiple screen setups. The key feature is activity profiles. You can create entirely separate profiles — each with its own data screens, auto-lap settings, alerts and sensor pairings — and switch between them before you start a ride.

So you can have:

• An "Endurance" profile with your four-field endurance screen
• An "Intervals" profile with your interval screen and manual laps enabled
• A "Climbing" profile with gradient and VAM fields
• A "Race" profile with NP, IF and TSS

Each profile is fully independent. Your interval profile can have auto-pause turned off (because you want to capture recovery valleys), while your endurance profile has it turned on. Your race profile can pair with a different power meter if you swap wheels for events.

On most Edge units (530, 540, 830, 840, 1040, 1050), you set this up through Menu > Activity Profiles > Add Profile or by editing an existing one. Within each profile, you customise the data screens through Data Screens > Edit, where you choose the number of fields per page (from one to ten) and assign each field. You can also add multiple data pages within a single profile — so your interval profile might have a primary interval page plus a secondary map page.

Garmin Connect IQ also lets you install custom data fields — things like a combined power/heart rate field, or a structured workout overlay. Some riders find these useful; most don't need them if their screens are well set up to begin with.

Wahoo

Wahoo takes a different approach. The ELEMNT, ROAM and BOLT units use a companion app for most configuration, and the data screens are tied more closely to the device itself rather than to named profiles.

You customise screens through the ELEMNT companion app:

• Open the app, connect to your unit
• Navigate to Workout Profiles (renamed from "Bike Profiles" on newer firmware)
• Select or create a profile
• Edit the data pages within that profile

Wahoo's advantage is simplicity — the companion app is remarkably easy to use, and reorganising fields is a drag-and-drop operation rather than the nested-menu process Garmin uses. Wahoo also does a nice job with its "Planned Workout" mode, which overlays target zones and interval structure directly onto your screen when you load a workout from TrainingPeaks, Zwift or another platform.

The limitation: Wahoo has historically been less flexible about the number of profiles and the depth of customisation within each one. Garmin lets you go deeper with custom data fields, activity-specific settings, and Connect IQ. Wahoo keeps it cleaner but gives you fewer levers.

The practical takeaway: both platforms can do what this guide describes. Garmin makes it slightly easier to maintain four or five fully independent screen setups. Wahoo makes each individual screen easier to configure. Pick based on which device you already own. Neither is the wrong choice here.

Vanity Metrics vs Actionable Metrics

Let me break this down. A vanity metric is a number that makes you feel something but doesn't change what you do. An actionable metric is a number that directly informs a decision you're making right now, on the bike, during this ride.

Vanity metrics (remove from most screens):

• Speed — on anything except a flat time trial, speed is a product of variables you don't control (wind, gradient, surface, drafting). You can't act on it. A headwind drops your speed by 5 km/h at the same power; did you get slower? No. Did your screen make you feel like you did? Yes. That's the problem.

• Calories — deeply inaccurate on most head units, and even if it were accurate, you're not making fuelling decisions based on a real-time calorie counter. You're fuelling to a plan (grams of carbs per hour). Calories on screen is a feel-good number, not a decision-making number.

• Average speed — the same problem as current speed, but averaged. It rewards drafting and descents and punishes climbing and headwinds. It tells you almost nothing about the quality of your effort.

• Max power — unless you're specifically doing sprint efforts and need to see your peak, max power just sits there displaying the number from that one hard surge at the traffic lights. It takes up a field that something useful could occupy.

Actionable metrics (earn a place on screen):

• Heart rate — directly tells you about intensity. You can act on it immediately: if it's too high, ease off. If it's too low, push up.

• Power (any variant) — the fundamental measure of your work output. NP, 3s power, lap power, 10s power — each variant suits a different ride type, but all of them tell you what your body is producing right now.

• Lap time / elapsed time — structures the ride. You need to know where you are in the session.

• Gradient — on climbs, tells you what's coming so you can pre-empt it.

• VAM — on climbs, tells you your climbing rate in terms you can compare and pace from.

• NP / IF / TSS — during long events, tells you about your energy budget.

The test is simple: can you name a specific decision you would make differently based on this number during this ride? If yes, it earns a field. If no, it's furniture.

The Case for Fewer Fields

Here's where it gets really interesting. The argument for fewer fields isn't just about aesthetics or screen readability. There's a genuine cognitive load issue.

When you're exercising above about 80% of VO2max — which is to say, during any serious interval or hard race effort — your brain's capacity for processing complex information drops measurably. This isn't speculation. Exercise physiology research, including work by Samuele Marcora on perception of effort and decision-making fatigue, shows that high-intensity exercise reduces executive function. You become worse at processing numbers, comparing values and making calculated decisions.

So if your interval screen shows eight fields, you're not reading eight fields during the hard effort. You're reading one or two — probably whichever is biggest — and the rest is wasted space that might actually slow down your ability to find the one number you need. Your eyes have to scan past six irrelevant fields to locate the two that matter.

Dan Lorang addressed this directly in interviews about how he set up athlete devices at BORA-hansgrohe. His approach was to strip screens to three or four fields maximum and make the primary field large enough that the athlete could read it without focusing. The rider's eyes shouldn't have to search. The number should be obvious.

Three fields per screen. Maybe four. That's the sweet spot. It's large enough that each number is readable at a glance while riding on the hoods. It's small enough that there's no visual clutter competing for your attention.

If you absolutely feel that four fields isn't enough, add a second data page that you can scroll to. Most Garmin and Wahoo units support multiple pages within a single activity profile. Put your primary execution metrics on page one — the fields you check constantly during the effort — and put secondary reference metrics on page two, the fields you check occasionally during recovery valleys or at rest stops.

This is a better solution than cramming eight fields onto one page and pretending you'll read them all.

How to Set Yours Up This Week

This is fixable in about 20 minutes. Here's the process:

Step 1: Decide which ride types you actually do. Most riders do some combination of: endurance rides, interval sessions, and occasional events. If you ride in the mountains regularly, add a climbing profile. If you race frequently, add a race profile. You probably need three screens, not four. Don't build screens for ride types you do once a year.

Step 2: Build each screen with a maximum of four fields. Use the field selections from the sections above as starting points, then adjust based on what you personally find useful. If you don't have a power meter, substitute power fields with heart rate fields and RPE awareness — the principles stay the same.

Step 3: Set up the corresponding activity profile or workout page on your unit. On Garmin, create a new activity profile for each ride type. On Wahoo, set up separate workout profiles through the companion app. Name them something obvious — "Endurance," "Intervals," "Race" — so you can switch in seconds before a ride.

Step 4: Use the right screen for the right ride. This is the step most people skip. They build the screens and then forget to switch. Build the habit. Before you start the ride, ask yourself: what is the purpose of this session? Select the matching profile. Start the ride.

Step 5: Review after a month. Ride with your new screens for four weeks, then honestly assess which fields you actually looked at and which you ignored. If a field survived four weeks without influencing a single decision, replace it or remove it entirely.

The good news is that none of this requires new equipment, new software, or any spending at all. It's a configuration change that takes 20 minutes and makes every ride you do slightly more focused and slightly less noisy. That's a rare combination — something that's free, fast, and actually works.

If you want to go deeper on structuring your training data — not just what to look at during a ride, but how to read the numbers afterwards — that's the kind of thing we cover regularly inside the community. Coaches, data nerds, and riders who've been through the same learning curve all comparing notes. Come and join us on Skool.