Preparing for a recreational gran fondo on May 7. The few weeks remaining now include only 3 rides between 3 and 4 hours in AI’s planned activities.
The day before yesterday I did a test on a hilly area 90k with 1400 altimeters. The ride felt (very) difficult. While the grand fondo is 110k with 1800 altimeters! So I am worried … Are my settings wrong?
Hi Luc! Good question! There’s a few things that I’d want to point out to hopefully address your concerns and give you some confidence heading into your last few weeks of preparation!
Doing a simulated event day a few weeks ahead of time can be a great way to test equipment, nutrition strategy, etc.! Your test ride was certainly a tough one - you should share the MPA chart from that ride!
Secondly, there wasn’t any taper for your simulated ride… You had a pretty intense ride the day before which meant you started the ride in yellow status, which made your ride feel even harder than it should have been! For your target event, Xert will help you taper so that you arrive at the starting line feeling fresh & ready to compete! You can see this by enabling the ‘Form’ line on your forecast chart and looking at the top (starting) freshness on your Target Event Date.
I would say this is completely fine for your goal/target event - you don’t necessarily need to ride the full distance of your event beforehand, just as marathon runners don’t often run more than ~20-22 miles in their training leading up to a full 26.2 mile marathon. You also need to consider that you’re also accumulating volume during the week on your shorter rides 
One last thing - if I might provide another suggestion - is to consider your pacing strategy (power output) and nutrition strategy for the event. If you’re going to be riding for 4+ hours, you should consider eating at least ~60g carbs per hour to maintain your energy levels. Further, if you’re riding too hard - especially above threshold - you’re going to burn through carbs pretty quickly, which will leave your legs feeling sapped and you might even have the dreaded BONK! You should find that a pace around LTP - with appropriate feeling - should be sustainable for several hours. Try and limit the time that you spend above LTP whenever possible!
Xert does offer estimates of fat/carbs burned (via Xert EBC app or Garmin ConnectIQ data fields), which you can use to help replenish carbs as they’re burned up.
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Thanks for the comprehensive response.
What you write does indeed make sense. Planning the test ride day after an intense training was indeed not a good idea. Thanks also for the other suggestions: drinking and eating!!!