Breakthrough question

Month ago I uploaded 2 years’ worth of data, goal was to have overall season to season “snapshot” of all my training.
My status says: last breakthrough 7 months ago…. 2 weeks ago I raced at Mosport and had some nice dig in the last 20 min of the race, while it was nothing big in comparison to last year races it surly was best effort this year.
How breakthrough concept works, is it best effort to date? If yes, how that fits in long time training, does this mean athlete always have to beat best time etc. in the case of master racers that might not be always possible, since we are not getting any younger…
Is it possible to draw the line at any given point eg start of new training season eg Nov 1st or whatever date we want to start at? “new season” option would also be good motivator, seeing “7 months last breakthrough” is not exactly motivational.:slight_smile:

Most active users should be getting breakthroughs every few weeks. Mid season, it is not uncommon to get 2 or 3 a week, if you’re doing hard group rides, crits and weekly races. The signature will decay according to the settings in My Settings/Profile. Original is the default which will allow your fitness signature number to slowly decline and will only increase when you get a breakthrough. No decay will attempt to track your fitness signature parameters with their training loads hence this means they will go up and down as you train. Use this mode sparingly since if there are issues or gaps in your data, it can get off track.

7 months without a breakthrough means either you had some wonky data or have not been riding you bike. :frowning:

Where can I read more details about how exactly Decay works? I’m quite confident my data is good, I double check with WKO4 and Golden cheetah, training wise I can only afford 10 hours a week. The approach I took this season is a bit different from suggested workouts. My last breakthrough was Crit in Aug 29 NP over 330W that bumped my threshold power to around 327W, since then I keep training at load high enough for threshold to stay high (very slow decay) I only have one high intensity session a week the rest is endurance, but nowhere close to NP330, so my threshold slowly drops to 311W few days back (seems like decay does not decay enough), from Sep 25 326W to Mar 10 317W

Yesterday we had first crit of the season NP above 310W (the highest since last year) and my threshold actually drops to 305W. and no breakthrough. Why threshold would drop after crit, it was hard but not smashing hard, I could easily ride same crit today with the same NP.
(I ride bike pretty much every day) I feel much stronger than last year at this time and threshold power chart shows that, but ag ain seems like to get breakthrough I need to push for higher power from last year, which makes no sense until later on in the season.

Check the glossary on fitness breakthroughs and the “magic setting” blog for info on decay methods. Going that long (since August) using dead reckoning, i.e. without a breakthrough, is going to make things difficult. Xert doesnt need formal testing but breakthroughs now and again keep the data analysis more accurate, even when using the No Decay setting.