Have you ever thought about having all your cycling training data organized in a visual athlete dashboards, accessible from anywhere and updated in real time?
With athlete dashboards, this is becoming increasingly easier, and smarter.
By integrating tools like Plotly Dash and Grafana, you can transform raw data into powerful insights. This means accurately monitoring your performance, tracking real-time metrics, and making decisions based on reliable information, all with an intuitive and customizable interface.
In this article, you’ll discover how to build your own athlete dashboards, understand how these platforms work together, and learn a practical step-by-step guide to get everything up and running. Get ready for a journey that will take your training to the next level.
Visualize Your Performance in Real Time
Have you ever felt like you’re cycling without knowing if you’re on the right track to improve? Athlete dashboards solve this problem with clear, up-to-date data, always at your fingertips.
With Plotly Dash, you can easily build interactive visual dashboards using Python. Grafana, on the other hand, offers a powerful visualization tool for continuous data, ideal for those who want to track progress, detect performance gaps, and adjust training in real time.
Another important point to consider is that with these technologies, you don’t rely on generic tools. You can create a dashboard tailored to your needs as a cyclist, focusing on performance, health, and goals.
It’s also worth noting that athlete dashboards are responsive, work on mobile, tablet, or computer, and can be configured to send alerts when something is out of the ordinary, such as a very high heart rate or a drop in cadence.
What Makes an Athlete Dashboard Truly Useful?
Let’s now explore in more detail the elements that make a dashboard not only beautiful, but also functional:
Customized metrics for your riding style
You can include variables such as:
- Average and maximum power
- Effort zones
- Climb time
- RPM per kilometer
- Performance comparison by weather or terrain
Device synchronization
To do this, you can use APIs from platforms such as:
- Strava API for segment and route data
- Garmin Connect API for vital signs and sensors
- Zwift API for indoor and gamified training
History and progress with context
With Grafana, you can view your data series over time periods such as:
- Week by week
- Month by month
- Pre- and post-race
- By bike type (road, gravel, MTB)
This flexibility puts you in complete control of your data — a benefit that off-the-shelf apps don’t always offer.
Technology for Performance
For cyclists who enjoy understanding the “why” behind performance, the combined use of Dash and Grafana is an accessible yet powerful solution. See the role of each component in the ecosystem:
- Dash (Python + Plotly): Builds the dashboard interface, allowing you to create graphs, selection menus, filters by athlete or period, and other visual interactions.
- Grafana: Specialist in live data and continuous monitoring, perfect for visualizing real-time signals.
- InfluxDB / PostgreSQL: Ideal database for storing the volume of information collected from training.
- Hosting (Heroku, DigitalOcean): Keeps the dashboard online 24/7, with automatic backups and updates if configured correctly.
Step by Step: Build Your Own Dashboard
Let’s delve a little deeper into this topic with a practical tutorial to create your athlete dashboards from scratch:
Step 1: Prepare your work environment
- Install Python (preferably 3.10+)
- Set up a virtual environment (venv or conda)
Install the libraries:
bash
CopyEdit
pip install dash pandas plotly flask gunicorn
Step 2: Capture performance data
- Create a token in the Strava API
- Use a library like requests or httpx to pull the data in JSON format
- Store locally with Pandas or directly in a database
Step 3: Build the layout in Dash
Structure your layout with columns, filters, buttons, and graphs:
- python
- CopyEdit
- dcc.Graph(id=’grafico-potencia’, figure=fig)
Create callbacks for interactivity:
- python
- CopyEdit
- @app.callback(Output(‘grafico-potencia’, ‘figure’), …)
- def actualizar_grafico(…): …
Step 4: Integrate with Grafana
- Configure Grafana to connect to your database
- Choose from ready-made dashboards (templates) or create your own
- Include visual alerts, filters, and comparisons
Step 5: Deploy with Heroku
- Create the Procfile and configure requirements.txt
- Upload the app with Git and Heroku CLI
- That’s it! Now you can access your dashboard from anywhere
Maintain, Evolve, and Automate Your Dashboards
Creating your first dashboard is just the beginning. If you truly want to extract maximum value from your cycling data, you need to think about maintenance, evolution, and automation.
Another important point to consider is that, just as your performance evolves, your dashboard should also keep pace. This means adapting the graphs to your new goals, integrating more sensors, and refining the analysis over time.
Update data automatically
You can schedule routines that pull your data every day at dawn, for example. This can be done with Python scripts using cron on the server or scheduling in the Heroku Scheduler.
Use simple intelligence for predictions
How about estimating your performance for the next race? You can apply lightweight linear regression algorithms to predict estimated time, energy expenditure, and even average heart rate.
Maintain security and privacy
It’s important to note that athlete dashboards may contain sensitive data. Protect access with a login and password, secure tokens in APIs, and, if possible, data encryption in the database.
Improve the look with a cleaner design
Over time, add a visual identity to your dashboard: use logos, alternate light/dark themes, and apply sports icons. A dashboard with good usability is much more engaging.
Create different dashboard versions
You can have:
- A coach dashboard (more technical, focused on detailed analysis)
- A test dashboard (focusing on live data and quick alerts)
- A personal dashboard (focusing on progress and motivation)
Let’s delve a little deeper: the more personalized your data environment, the more it becomes a strategic tool, not just a pretty visual.
Advanced Tips to Stand Out with Your Dashboard
Want to get ahead? Try these under-explored ideas:
- Create a “race mode” with visual alerts and simplified graphs for use during runs.
- Add a live GPS map using the dash-leaflet library to show your real-time location.
- Generate automatic PDFs with your post-ride workout summary to send to your coach.
- Integrate with Telegram or WhatsApp API to receive notifications about non-standard metrics.
- Create a “gear comparison” dashboard that shows performance by bike type, tires, or even lubricant used.
These ideas not only make your dashboard more functional, but also elevate your training experience to a new level.
Conclusion: Turn Data into Action
Throughout this article, you’ve seen how to combine Plotly Dash and Grafana to create truly effective athlete dashboards. You’ve learned how to connect your data, build custom visualizations, and publish everything to a web-ready environment to track your workouts in real time.
The benefits are clear: more control, more precision, and more results on your ride. With a tailored dashboard, you can transform random metrics into smart decisions—and accelerate your progress.
💡 Now it’s up to you: build your first dashboard, test the features, and see the difference technology can make in your performance.
🚴 Your future as a more efficient, strategic, and connected cyclist starts now. Use technology to your advantage—and ride smart!
