I did a team ride today for about 5 hours and it ended up at 300 XSS and 67 Difficulty. I think the duration and the XSS explains it feeling hard; not really questioning that. What I’m not so sure about is that on the efforts where I really wanted to go hard, I didn’t, and it wasn’t from really Difficulty, hitting MPA, or super high HR for an extended period. Most likely just a not great day, or other things I could look at?
Hydration and nutrition come to mind. Or just simple motivation / mental fatigue
Also depends when in the ride you felt that way, and how a 5 hour ride compares to your usual training and overall load as well…
It has to be an off day on some level. I went back and looked at other rides, and I drew down MPA a lot more under harder Difficulty. It was cold too; probably the hardest ride I’ve done around 3/38 degrees.
Cold air has more density and thus a higher resistance, definitely causes more work and effort for the same ride. I’ve seen my average heart rate almost 10 points higher on a cold ride.
Were you expecting a higher than moderate difficulty rating based on perceived effort or length of the ride?
What do you classify as a “bad day”? For me any day on a bike is a good day.
A bad day outdoors would be too many flats, rainy and cold, or a dog bite. 
I was expecting to be able to draw down MPA more at some point in the ride. Felt like I couldn’t express my signature particularly well at any point in the ride.
By drawdown do you mean get it lower or deplete it to a BT level? If the former then it depends on how hard you were pushing at certain parts of the ride. If you were at or below LTP for instance then you would not be dropping your MPA that much.
No, what I mean is that when fresh, you’d be expect to be able to draw down MPA until you fail, but in practice, as you get more tired, have a bad, etc, you might not be able to draw down MPA to the point of breakthrough. On this ride, even pulling down MPA a bit, felt like more than it should.
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