Any tips on using mpa to manage endurance ride?

General
1

I am a weekend warrior, usually do a 80~150km ride on the weekends, and 2 or 3 indoor session during the weekdays with xert.

i found mpa and tte especially useful when to control my pace during short time efforts (mostly hill segments)

however im not sure what the best use to intuitively use mpa to manage long range efforts, to make it sustainable, but just sustainable so that im putting my best endurance effort.

obviously trying to remain on the sweet spot would be best, but many causes drift you away from the ss zone (traffic, small hills, etc)

my initial assumption is that if i try to maintain my mpa around 90% of baseline it would to just challanging enough, but not to tough. I havent had a chance.to validate my ideas yet.

anyone had experience/or better ways to use xert metrics to manage long efforts on lomg rides on the fly?

2

MPA does not reduce when not above threshold so I would think it would not be that applicable to watch it over long rides.
Clearly you cannot ride for hours without having an impact on yourself but I am not sure MPA is the best way to monitor that.

1 Like
3

I use MPA/Power app & watch the “Power Side” color. Blue = LTP & under, Green = LTP to Threshold.
So I’ll roll Blue on flats & down, and let myself bump into Green on climbs for example.
Easy for me to just watch the colors vs trying to “think” about numbers.

2 Likes
4

MPA is not useless, but I think TTE (and TTR) will give you better paced longer efforts. If you have similar climbs, or do hill repeats, set TTE at or just over the (expected) time of your effort and then go back to somewhere sub LTP, using TTR to see when you’ve recharged.

5

The Carbs/Fat data field can also be very helpful. When the fats section is glowing RED, you’re at/near your Fatmax, so it’s at an effort level that you’ll be able to sustain for a considerable amount of time. When the Carbs are glowing RED, its indicating that you’re burning through Carbs at a fast rate. Remember that most people can only ingest about 60-90g of carbs per hour, so you can keep an eye on the total amount of carbs used and try to limit it below 90/hour. You can also try to remember to eat a bar/gel etc. every ~30g CHO or so, to try and keep your glycogen stores intact for the later stages of the ride.

A few tips, but I hope this helps!

3 Likes
6

Interesting Scott!
Not tried it yet but does this also works for the Android Player?

7

interesting ill have some more look into it thanks for reply!

8

Yes! If you tap/hold the bottom 6 cells on the ‘Activity’ page, you can select from a wide variety of options. The options you would be looking for would be “Carbs used - g” and “Fat used - g”

1 Like