Today was the worst day for a tough workout, Power 60. I felt like I was pedaling through mud and when I would pause, I could feel the immense heaviness in my uterus, because it’s day one of my cycle. Garmin used to do a fair job of outlining the symptoms and what to keep up on but now, they have removed all of that helpful info. Anyone know of an app that would do such a thing?
-Angie
Hi Angie, I don’t know of other apps but can ask a few colleagues. What was the kind of info that Garmin provided before, exactly?
Fitrwoman is the app that everyone is using and talking about. I tried it but found that all of the symptoms and statements for every cycle week but the first one were negative. It was discouraging, at least to me. Other people seem to love it so your mileage may vary.
I use Clue which lets you define and track your own symptoms. It’s much less opinionated and I like it better. 
I get something like a 10% power drop in the few days before my cycle starts. It’s awful. I feel like I’m pedaling through peanut butter. I recently started trying and tweaking the Period Protocol from the Roar book and things have been improving in that area. Adding BCAA’s and zinc seem to have made the biggest difference. The Roar book overall is pretty helpful in understanding why some of this stuff happens, although it isn’t foolproof either.
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I am like you @stacypro in that if the app is opinionated I get discouraged. For example, when I had one of those apps that tracks sleep quality, I would feel tired just by reading that I had a below average night’s sleep.
I like the idea of tracking your own symptoms, because they can be very unique and vary month to month depending on diet, stress, etc. I also see clear difference in performance a few days before my cycle starts, and I might be able to hit numbers but it is at a harder perceived effort. One time I CRIED on the trainer 
only women would understand that!!
So I also read Roar and did Stacy’s suggested approach. BCAA’s can indeed help with the brain/muscle communication, but that’s true even in other times of the month. What I found that works better for me, however, is diet. As long as I am diligent about eating well, the symptoms are significantly reduced.
Maybe try the self-tracking protocol @adm0629. You could check out Clue or even use the metrics in TrainingPeaks.
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Oh, I cried on a hard group ride once. It was that last few days before my period, I just couldn’t get it together, and I kept getting dropped.
Theia, what do you do diet-wise that you find helps? What do you define as eating well, especially for that time of month? Of course, that’s the time of month where I crave salt, carbs, and comfort food.
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I make sure to eat as much whole foods as possible (aka “one-ingredient foods”) and stay away from sugar and processed foods. I find that if I don’t eat comfort foods I won’t crave them.
I wish I would have taken screenprints but it was something along the lines of “you may feel sluggish today, you can try to take some extra X and get some extra sleep” (of course). They would also target days where you might crave extra carbs, etc. so I appreciated the extra awareness and tips to try and stay more even. Unfortunately, I had meant to notify Garmin that they could improve the usefulness of the functionality if they had the capability of daily reminders because honestly, I could rarely remember to actually look at the app! That’s why I don’t exactly recall what advice they gave!
I appreciate this discussion, at least! 
-Angie