Hello, my name is José and I’m writing from Portugal.
After knowing Xert a few years ago, I have now decided to go for it.
Before that, I did a lot of reading on the forum and the blog, having clarified many doubts and learned a lot about Xert.
I thank you all in advance.
I am writing this post for some final considerations.
At the moment I only regret that the EBC app is not fully compatible with my smart bike, as it does not give me a power output reading, this may be resolved in the future.
Advanced, in June I will participate in a gran fondo, with about 130km, 1800m.
As such I chose for my plan an event, otherwise, as PrtSc below.
Hi @Quintas ! Welcome to Xert! There is plenty to learn - this forum is a good place for that
One thing I want to point out: Your Low TL is already quite well-trained at 95, but it looks like your High (HIE) and Peak (Peak Power) systems will need some work before your race. From the initial estimate, you’ll need to increase both your High & Peak TL nearly 10-fold (0.6 to 5.0 and 0.1 to 1.0, respectively). So you can expect to be doing some pretty intense intervals so that those systems are strained & will be able to handle those harder efforts on race day.
Generally I like the plan. However, since you mentioned that the race does have a lot of climbing ( 1800m) you could might try using the ‘Mountainous’ terrain instead, which will shift some of the training off your HIE & PP systems towards your Low/Threshold system instead. When you change the terrain type, watch how the estimated Low, High, & Peak XSS values for your event change!
Also, you can try disabling the auto-estimated Event Readiness and see if you can get the value to be closer to 1.0… this will require you to train more & achieve higher training loads heading into your event.
Those values correspond to how long you’ll be Yellow or Red Star status.
Red = how long your low energy system needs to rest before you’re able to train again (Fresh/blue stars)
Yellow = how long your High/Peak intensity systems need rest before they’re fresh to train again
In your specific case, you’ll be red for 0.4 days (so ready to train by tomorrow) and yellow for 2.3 days. You can expect to be doing low intensity/endurance the next couple of days
Depends on how close the training was to the recommendation. If you’re relatively close, then it probably won’t need any adaptations. If you deviated a lot (or deviated a little bit each day over the course of many days) then you may need to adapt. You can check your Forecast Chart for XSS matchsticks outlined in magenta, which identifies specific issues with your plan. Hover over the magenta matchsticks to see the error message. When adapting, Xert will try to resolve these issues.
We have some improvements coming that will reduce how frequently the red dot may show.
Very grateful for the help and I have already made the adjustments.
One more question: How does the “Event Duration” field actually work?
What value should we enter and how will it affect my plan?
That field allows you to estimate how long your event will be. As you increase the event duration, you should notice the total XSS (Low, High, & Peak) will increase. You should also notice your estimated Training Loads (TL) for Low, High, & Peak will adjust as the target event XSS increases/decreases.
You can give yourself some “extra” training by intentionally setting the duration to be longer, which will give you a higher XSS target for your event & increase the training needed.
To answer the second part - the longer your planned event is, the more XSS we expect you to accumulate from your event. This impacts how much training you need to do to be prepared for your event. The amount of training needed for a 250 XSS event is quite a bit lower than a 700 XSS event.
Importantly, Xert doesn’t only look at the total XSS for your event, but also specifically at the individual Low, High, & Peak XSS targets, which is important for determining which system(s) need to be trained to be prepared!
For an extreme example, try changing the Event Type from Gran Fondo to Criterium or Road Race and notice how the High & Peak XSS values increase significantly, which impacts how much your High & Peak TL’s need to be trained.
