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Athlete self-assessment proposal

Summary

This proposal outlines a coach-led weekly self-assessment conversation run by Coach Luca with the athlete.

The recommended version is a Monday rest-day chat started by Coach Luca. For Sidney, this would normally begin on Monday morning because Monday is typically her planned rest day. The conversation should feel like a professional coach-athlete review of the previous week and a practical setup for the coming week.

The process has two parts:

  1. Coach preparation before the chat starts
  2. Live assessment conversation with the athlete, documented in one Markdown file for that date

The goal is to capture the athlete’s own view of the week, identify issues or opportunities that matter for planning, and use that material to shape the next week of training, nutrition, recovery, and strength decisions.

This version should be orchestrated by two cron jobs:

  1. a preparation cron job that creates or updates the assessment document and writes Coach Luca’s preparation notes into the first part of the file
  2. an athlete-assessment cron job that triggers the Q&A conversation with the athlete and appends the live exchange into the same document

Both cron jobs should run relative to the athlete’s local timezone on the athlete’s rest day, not Coach Luca’s timezone or the server timezone.

Core recommendation

Do not build this first as a heavily structured assessment tool.

Build it first as a guided Coach Luca chat workflow with disciplined preparation and disciplined documentation.

That gives the system the benefits that matter most:

  • it feels natural to the athlete
  • Coach Luca can adapt the conversation based on the athlete’s answers
  • the coaching team gets richer context than a fixed form would provide
  • the full exchange becomes reusable evidence for planning
  • it matches how good coaches actually review a week with an athlete
  • it allows follow-up questions when something important appears
  • it avoids asking irrelevant questions when the week was straightforward
  • it captures tone, confidence, uncertainty, and emphasis, not just checkboxes
  • it creates a better bridge into the coming week’s plan
  • it can be implemented as a generic coaching workflow rather than an athlete-specific one

Generalization and implementation guardrail

This proposal must be implemented as a generic coaching workflow that can apply across athletes.

That means:

  • no athlete-specific data should be embedded in any skill created from this proposal
  • no athlete-specific configuration should be hard-coded into the skill logic, cron definitions, prompts, templates, or process rules
  • no athlete-specific examples should be treated as defaults in a way that narrows the workflow to one athlete
  • all athlete-specific timing, delivery, schedule, rest-day, and planning inputs should be resolved from canonical athlete files or runtime context, not from the skill definition itself

Sidney is used in this proposal only as an example athlete for illustrating the workflow. The resulting implementation should remain reusable for other athletes without rewriting the skill or process design.

If this proposal leads to a skill, cron workflow, or related operating documentation, those artifacts should be written at the generic system level. Athlete-specific behavior should come from athlete records, settings, schedules, and planning files, not from the implementation rules themselves.

Main use case

Weekly rest-day assessment chat

The default workflow should be a weekly self-assessment conversation started by Coach Luca on the athlete’s planned rest day.

For Sidney:

  • normal trigger day: Monday
  • normal timing: Monday morning
  • purpose: review the previous week and shape the coming week

This should become the main recurring assessment rhythm unless the athlete’s schedule changes.

The recurring rhythm should be supported by two cron jobs:

  • Cron job 1, preparation trigger: runs before the athlete-facing thread, creates the weekly assessment file if needed, and writes Coach Luca’s preparation notes into the document
  • Cron job 2, athlete Q&A trigger: runs later on the same rest day, starts the athlete conversation, and records the raw back-and-forth into the same file

Both cron jobs should be scheduled relative to the athlete’s local time on that rest day. For example, if Sidney is in Victoria, BC, the preparation cron should run at 3:00 AM Victoria time and the athlete self-assessment should trigger again at around 9:00 AM Victoria time.

The assessment conversation may remain active over the course of that same assessment day rather than needing to complete in one exchange. If the athlete does not answer the latest question promptly, Coach Luca may send a brief follow-up or reminder later the same day. Those follow-ups must stay within the assessment day and must not roll into the next day.

What the assessment should accomplish

The conversation should help Coach Luca understand:

  • what the athlete felt went well that week
  • what did not go well
  • where the athlete sees improvement or stagnation
  • any unresolved soreness, fatigue, illness, or recovery concern
  • confidence and motivation heading into the next week
  • nutrition or fueling issues that need correction
  • body-weight trend, when relevant
  • any schedule, travel, life, or logistics constraint that affects planning

The outcome is not just a record. The outcome is a better weekly coaching plan.

Two-part process

Part 1: Coach preparation

Before Coach Luca starts the assessment chat, there should be a preparation pass.

This phase should be started by the first cron job.

This is essential. Coach Luca should not enter the conversation cold.

Purpose of the preparation phase

The preparation phase allows Coach Luca to identify:

  • the most important themes from the week
  • unresolved concerns
  • signs of progress
  • athlete-reported issues that need follow-up
  • discrepancies between plan and execution
  • nutrition, recovery, or strength topics that deserve attention
  • specific points that should shape next week’s prescription

Preparation inputs

Coach Luca should review the most relevant evidence from the completed week before drafting talking points or questions for the athlete conversation.

The preparation review should explicitly include:

  • all athlete daily logs from the previous week
  • the current 7-day plan
  • the current 3-week plan
  • athlete messages and check-ins
  • planned versus completed sessions
  • available TrainingPeaks workout context and comments
  • notable execution issues
  • soreness, illness, or energy complaints
  • nutrition notes
  • recovery notes
  • strength notes
  • upcoming calendar demands

These inputs should all be taken into account when building the list of talking points and follow-up questions for the assessment chat.

Preparation improvements

A few additions would make the preparation pass stronger.

1. Review against plan intent, not only completed work

Coach Luca should compare what happened in the week against what the 7-day plan and 3-week plan were trying to achieve.

That means identifying:

  • whether the intended load and density were actually absorbed
  • whether the week progressed the current block as expected
  • whether the athlete is still on track for the next two to three weeks
  • whether any issue now requires changing the short-term progression

2. Build a ranked talking-points list

The preparation step should not produce a loose pile of observations. It should produce a ranked list of priorities for the athlete chat.

A practical structure would be:

  • one to two highest-priority concerns
  • one to two positive trends worth reinforcing
  • one to three clarification questions that are necessary before finalizing the coming week

This keeps the conversation focused and avoids over-questioning.

3. Distinguish resolved versus unresolved issues

Preparation should mark which issues are already understood and which still require athlete input.

For example:

  • a known fueling miss that already has enough evidence may only need confirmation
  • an unclear fatigue pattern may need direct athlete explanation
  • a schedule risk for the coming week may need explicit confirmation before the plan is finalized

This helps Coach Luca ask only questions that matter.

4. Include forward-looking planning checkpoints

Preparation should not only review the past week. It should also identify what must be protected or advanced in the coming week.

Examples:

  • key session that must be preserved
  • recovery need that must be respected
  • nutrition priority that should be emphasized early in the week
  • strength load that may need to be reduced, held, or progressed

This will make the assessment chat a better bridge into weekly planning rather than a backward-looking recap only.

5. Prepare specialist-sensitive prompts

When relevant, Coach Luca should prepare prompts that are especially useful to endurance, nutrition, recovery, or strength.

Examples:

  • endurance: did the athlete feel progression in the intended quality sessions
  • nutrition: were there any repeated fueling misses or appetite issues
  • recovery: did fatigue clear as expected between key sessions
  • strength: did soreness or gym load interfere with on-bike execution

These prompts do not all need to be asked. They should simply be available if the conversation points in that direction.

Preparation output

Before messaging the athlete, Coach Luca should write a short internal preparation section for that assessment date.

This section should include:

  • key positives from the week
  • key concerns from the week
  • open questions for the athlete
  • specific topics that require follow-up
  • items likely to affect next week’s training or nutrition
  • a ranked talking-points list for the assessment chat
  • unresolved items that require athlete clarification before the week is finalized
  • forward-looking planning checkpoints for the coming week

This preparation section becomes the first half of the assessment document.

Preparation cron job

The first cron job should:

  • start at 3:00 AM in the athlete’s local timezone on the athlete’s planned weekly assessment day
  • for Sidney, if she is currently in Victoria, BC, this means the preparation step would normally begin at 3:00 AM Victoria time on Monday
  • create the dated assessment Markdown file if it does not exist
  • populate metadata and Coach Luca preparation sections
  • review all athlete daily logs from the previous week
  • review the current 7-day plan
  • review the current 3-week plan
  • gather the most relevant weekly evidence before the athlete thread begins
  • build a prioritized talking-points list and open questions for the athlete
  • leave the document ready for the second step of the workflow

The output of this cron job is not a message to the athlete. Its output is a prepared assessment document with clear coaching priorities and follow-up topics.

Part 2: Live assessment conversation

After preparation, Coach Luca starts the athlete chat.

This phase should be triggered by the second cron job.

This conversation should be light in structure but not casual in purpose. It should feel like a professional weekly review between coach and athlete.

Conversation style

The conversation should be:

  • direct
  • easy to answer
  • adaptive
  • professional
  • specific to the athlete’s real week
  • athlete-centered in wording and focus
  • written in normal cycling-coach language that would sound credible inside the sport

Coach Luca should not send a rigid block of ten questions unless the situation truly calls for it.

Instead, Coach Luca should start with a few well-chosen prompts and then adapt based on the athlete’s answers.

Coach Luca should avoid internal workflow language, generic wellness-survey phrasing, therapy-style prompts, corporate tone, or terminology that would sound unnatural coming from a cycling coach. The athlete-facing thread should sound like a real coach reviewing training, recovery, fueling, and execution with an athlete.

Athlete Q&A cron job

The second cron job should:

  • start in the morning at around 9:00 AM in the athlete’s local timezone, wherever the athlete is located that day
  • for Sidney, if she is currently in Victoria, BC, the self-assessment should trigger at around 9:00 AM Victoria time
  • run after the preparation cron job has completed
  • resolve the athlete’s effective local timezone before triggering the conversation
  • read the prepared assessment file for that date
  • use the preparation notes to shape the opening message and likely follow-up topics
  • trigger the athlete-facing Q&A thread
  • capture the outgoing and incoming raw messages into the same assessment document
  • leave the file ready for extracted findings and planning implications

This second cron job is the operational handoff from internal coach preparation to athlete-facing assessment.

Same-day follow-up rule

The athlete Q&A thread may continue across the assessment day as responses arrive. Coach Luca may send a short same-day follow-up if the athlete has not answered the most recent question and a reply is still useful for that day’s weekly assessment.

Examples of acceptable same-day follow-up messages:

  • a brief reminder to reply when convenient
  • a short clarification if the athlete answered partially
  • one concise check-back later in the day if an important planning point is still unresolved

Guardrail:

  • the weekly assessment thread must not continue beyond the assessment day
  • unanswered questions should be closed out in the document as unresolved rather than carrying the assessment conversation into the next day
  • any next-day follow-up should be handled as normal coaching communication, not as a continuation of the prior day’s assessment workflow

A good weekly opening sequence would center on questions like:

  • What felt like it went well this week?
  • What did not go well?
  • Where do you feel you improved, or where do you feel stuck?
  • Is there anything from the week that you think I should pay attention to for next week?

These questions are useful because they give the athlete room to surface what mattered most from their side.

Based on the athlete’s answers, Coach Luca can branch into the areas that matter.

Training and execution

Useful follow-up prompts may include:

  • Which session felt best, and why?
  • Which session felt off?
  • Did anything feel harder than it should have?
  • Do you feel like the week accumulated well, or did fatigue get ahead of you?

Recovery

Useful follow-up prompts may include:

  • How recovered do you feel coming into this week?
  • Any lingering soreness, tightness, or heaviness?
  • Any signs that recovery was not keeping up with the work?

Nutrition

Useful follow-up prompts may include:

  • Did you feel well fueled through the week?
  • Any sessions where fueling was clearly not good enough?
  • Any appetite, GI, hydration, or meal-structure issues?

Strength and musculoskeletal status

Useful follow-up prompts may include:

  • Any movement limitation or soreness that changed how you trained?
  • Any gym work that left more residual fatigue than expected?
  • Any area that needs protecting or modifying this coming week?

Body weight and monitoring

When appropriate for the athlete and context, Coach Luca should also ask for a weight check.

This should be handled as a practical planning data point, not as a body-image conversation.

Useful prompt:

  • Send me your current weight when you can, so I can track the trend and plan the coming week properly.

If the athlete provides a weight value, it should be recorded as a historical value and incorporated into future planning where relevant.

Weekly context and constraints

Useful follow-up prompts may include:

  • Anything in your schedule this week that changes what is realistic?
  • Any travel, logistics, appointments, or external stress I should account for?
  • Anything that changes your ability to execute the key sessions well?

How Coach Luca should adapt the thread

The conversation should change as answers are received.

Examples:

  • If the athlete says the week felt good, the conversation can move quickly toward what to build on.
  • If the athlete flags soreness, the thread should focus on location, type, severity, and effect on training.
  • If the athlete flags low energy or poor fueling, the thread should shift toward nutrition and recovery questions.
  • If the athlete reports frustration or underperformance, Coach Luca should clarify whether the problem was fitness, recovery, execution, schedule, or expectation.

The point is not to cover every topic every week. The point is to surface what matters.

Planning impact

This weekly assessment should directly inform the coming week’s plan.

It should affect:

  • session choice
  • session density
  • progression or restraint
  • nutrition focus
  • recovery emphasis
  • strength loading
  • monitoring priorities
  • follow-up frequency during the week

Examples:

  • reduce strength loading if musculoskeletal fatigue is still present
  • increase fueling emphasis before and after key sessions if last week’s intake was poor
  • simplify the first two days of the week if recovery is incomplete
  • progress key endurance work if the athlete reports good absorption and execution
  • protect one key session if schedule constraints will compress the week

Storage model

The proposal should use a dedicated assessment directory inside the athlete directory.

  • athlete/assessments/

Each assessment should be stored as a single Markdown file.

File naming

Use the same date-first naming pattern already used elsewhere in the system.

Recommended format:

  • YYYY-MM-DD-weekly-self-assessment.md

Example:

  • athlete/assessments/2026-04-20-weekly-self-assessment.md

Proposed document structure

Each assessment file should contain both the preparation work and the full recorded conversation.

Recommended section structure:

1. Metadata

Include key context such as:

  • athlete name
  • assessment type
  • date
  • week under review
  • planned trigger day
  • plan horizon, for example coming 7 days

2. Coach preparation

This section is written before the athlete chat begins.

Suggested content:

  • major positives from the week
  • major concerns from the week
  • follow-up topics
  • planning decisions likely under consideration
  • specialist-relevant questions to clarify

3. Conversation goals

A short list of what Coach Luca wants to learn in this specific assessment.

Example:

  • confirm whether fatigue is resolved after the weekend block
  • understand whether fueling issues affected Thursday and Saturday
  • get current weight value
  • confirm schedule constraints for the coming week

4. Raw conversation log

This section should record every message sent back and forth that belongs to the assessment thread.

Each message should be stored in a raw code block.

When the message is text, save the exact raw value. Each logged message should also include a separate Timestamp: line outside the code block, using the athlete-local timestamp for when the message was sent or received. The timestamp should not be placed in the heading.

Suggested pattern:

Coach Luca

Timestamp: 2026-04-20 08:12 MDT

How do you feel the week went overall? What felt good, what did not go well, and is there anything you want me to account for in next week’s plan?

Athlete

Timestamp: 2026-04-20 08:19 MDT

Legs were generally good, but I felt flat on Thursday and underfueled on Saturday. Strength work left me a bit more sore than expected.

This raw-log section is important because it preserves the exact wording of both sides and records when each message was sent or received in the athlete’s local time.

5. Key extracted findings

After the conversation, Coach Luca should summarize the most decision-relevant findings, for example:

  • athlete feels aerobic work is progressing well
  • Saturday fueling was insufficient
  • residual lower-body soreness still present from gym work
  • body weight stable at 58.4 kg
  • Wednesday schedule constraint may require moving a key session

6. Planning implications

Coach Luca should record how the findings change the coming week.

This section should answer:

  • what changes in training
  • what changes in nutrition
  • what changes in recovery emphasis
  • what changes in strength prescription
  • what needs follow-up later in the week

7. Specialist routing notes, optional

If needed, this section can note what matters for each specialist role.

For example:

  • endurance: confidence high, threshold progression acceptable
  • nutrition: underfueling occurred before long session, reinforce pre-session carbohydrate intake
  • recovery: monitor soreness carryover and Monday-to-Tuesday freshness
  • strength: reduce lower-body loading density this week

Best first implementation

The best first implementation is a weekly coach-led chat on the athlete’s rest day.

Version 1

Build a Monday morning rest-day conversation workflow that includes:

  • a preparation step by Coach Luca
  • a natural opening message
  • adaptive follow-up questions based on athlete replies
  • the ability for the thread to continue through the same assessment day
  • optional same-day reminder or clarification messages if the athlete has not replied
  • a hard stop at the end of the assessment day
  • one assessment file per conversation
  • raw message capture in code blocks
  • a short extracted-summary and planning-impact section

This version is simple, realistic, and immediately useful.

Improvements that make the idea stronger

Improvement 1: Planned weekly trigger by athlete

Allow each athlete to have a default self-assessment trigger day, such as Monday for Sidney, rather than treating this as a generic workflow.

Improvement 2: Preparation prompts for Coach Luca

The system should help Coach Luca prepare before the chat by prompting for:

  • main concern of the week
  • main positive of the week
  • likely limiter for next week
  • specific follow-up items to ask

This improves assessment quality and avoids generic questioning.

Improvement 3: Historical weight tracking integration

If the athlete provides body weight during the assessment, the system should save it in a way that supports historical review and planning use.

That would allow trend-aware decisions without making the conversation overly focused on body mass.

Improvement 4: Weekly planning handoff

The assessment should explicitly feed the upcoming weekly plan rather than remain a standalone note.

A useful future enhancement would be a handoff section that can be used to generate or revise:

  • rolling 7-day planning
  • the athlete calendar
  • nutrition focus for the week
  • specific monitoring priorities

Improvement 5: Reusable conversation starter patterns

Coach Luca should have several opening styles available depending on the week:

  • normal rest-day review
  • post-race review
  • post-illness review
  • overload-risk review
  • travel-week review

This keeps the interaction natural while still consistent.

Risks and design guardrails

Risk 1: It becomes too survey-like

If this turns into a fixed form every Monday, the value drops.

Risk 2: It becomes too vague

If Coach Luca does not prepare well, the chat may stay pleasant but fail to produce decision-relevant information.

Risk 3: The raw messages are not saved properly

If the conversation is not documented as exact raw exchanges, a useful evidence trail is lost.

Risk 4: The assessment does not influence planning

If the athlete gives good feedback and the next week’s plan does not reflect it, the workflow loses credibility.

Risk 5: Weight monitoring becomes overemphasized

Weight can be useful, but it should stay in proper performance context and not dominate the conversation unless there is a real reason.

Proposed roadmap

Phase 1, two-cron weekly workflow

Implement the Monday rest-day assessment as a two-cron Coach Luca workflow with preparation, live conversation, and structured Markdown storage.

Phase 2, preparation support

Add prompts or lightweight templates that help Coach Luca identify what to ask before the thread starts.

Phase 3, derived summary support

Generate a concise planning handoff from the assessment so the weekly review feeds directly into training and nutrition decisions.

Phase 4, athlete-specific variants

Adapt the workflow by athlete, season phase, risk profile, and coaching focus.

Bottom line

The strongest version of this idea is not a static self-assessment form. It is a rest-day coach-led chat that feels natural, is prepared intelligently, and is documented rigorously.

For Sidney, the right default is a Monday morning weekly assessment conversation started by Coach Luca. The file for that date should contain the coach’s preparation, the exact raw exchange between coach and athlete, the extracted findings, and the planning implications for the coming week.

That would create a practical bridge between athlete reflection and better weekly coaching decisions across training, nutrition, recovery, and strength.