We need to address some possible issues with 4+ hour availabilities. Try setting it to just 4 hours and see if the plan lays out better. Post the chart here so we can see what you’re describing.
A lot of other people have mentioned it but at the moment “event” just does “Minimum xss to make sure you don’t fail your event”.
You have to use the improvement option to maximise fitness within a given timescale.
I think the problem you are describing is the same as described here:
After switching to 4 hours, Forecast AI uses these 4 hours almost every Tuesday generating ~280 XSS recommendations.
But now it has kinda scrapped/ruined the taper week
800 XSS on Sunday???
Click and drag over the last week in your plan, click on the -Form- legend and mouse over the lower red dot on your 800xss event. Show us a screenshot.
The workouts leading up to the event will have small slivers for high/peak and thus are simply keeping the engine revved up, so to speak, for the event. You’ll be fresh for the event and recovered in less days that what your Event Readiness is set to.
If you think you can handle more training, you can use the Program window (ciick Program on the top right) and manually input more xss and/or use the Settings tab and lower the Event Readiness and re-run a forecast to see final Training Loads are within reach. Ultimately, it’s the Event Readiness together with the event XSS, Focus and Specificity that define the target Training Loads you need to reach for the event and thus, the amount of training you need to do in preparation.
That’s the event. Rosenheimer Radmarathon, longest tour, 266km, almost 5000m elevation gain
I expect about 6 hours of tempo/low threshold climbing paired with lots of descending and some flat bits for a total of 11-12 hours.
I hope you mean this view of the forecast chart
I would start the event with a form of [17 17 -0.1 0.1]
Perfect.
Your status is blue at the start (blue dot above the red dot) and these will drop to red over the course of the event. It’ll take you 3.8 days for low intensity to recover, 3.5 for high to recover and 1.4 for peak to recover upon completion of 800XSS. 4 days to recover is considered “Poor” Event Readiness. For an 800XSS event, it’s hard to get to 3 or 2 Event Readiness since that would require a lot more training. You can move the Event Readiness slider under Settings in the Program window to 2 or 3 to see how much more training you’ll need (lots more hours!!!).
If you want to dig into this deeper, if you think the event 800XSS is too high/low (or not sure exactly how much XSS this event would really be), you can upload something similar that you’ve done in the past and use the XSS from that in order to get a better gauge on how much XSS the event will have. You can also manually adjust the Focus and Specificity although that’s even more advanced. This will help determine how much training you’ll actually need to do to prepare. The key training outcome being that you’ll be fresh before the event and fresh after the event by a certain number of days. The optimizing algorithm will create a taper that ensures you’re fresh before and will help you reach the training loads necessary for the Event Readiness. The less recovery afterwards you need, the more ready you are for the event.
Is there any way to get Forecast AI to recognise something as an important event within the program?
e.g. I have a 5 hour race on Saturday. I put it in the planner and the engine is spitting out 2x intensity days before it.
It definitely should. Can you send this into support in case we need additional info?
Sorry, it’s me again. Maybe my now 600 XSS target event throws the Forecast AI off? I don’t know.
It is generating some really hard training targets, especially concerning High and Peak energy. For Tuesday (my long 4h day) it suggested a Puncheur workout with 30+ High Energy and AI Generator made this:
2 minutes @ 522W is very challenging for me - I managed to do two intervals before I had to turn it down during the 3rd set to 90% (470W), skipping the 4th set to recover. I afterwards reduced my HIE by 10% generating a manual false breakthrough. Good idea?
I also burned almost 25g of Carbs during a single 520W interval, which would mean eating a gel every 9 minutes to keep fueled! Yes, 350g in 3.5 hours is a lot of Carbs to eat (and digest). I’m no pro cyclist who is used to taking 100+g Carbs per hour. Does Forecast AI (and the AI Generator) consider Carb intake at all? I’d guess no. For 30-60 minute workouts this might be fine to rely on stored Glycogen but not for 3.5 hours.
I’m also not good with short / hard intervals. I can quite well ride for 20 minutes @ 105% TP. VO2 is decent, but I’m not that good at anaerobic. In the past I preferred to do two hard, short workouts (VO2 up to sprint) per week each with 60 to 90 minutes including warmup and cooldown. I see no way to make the Forecast AI split up a big chunky workout into two or several smaller ones. Is there a way?
Tomorrow AI Forecast want’s me to to a 195XSS [7P 23H 165L] workout with “Zone: 6 - Anaerobic. Target Interval Power: 481.9 watts.” in the description. Using that I can come up with:
It’s “Good, Optimal Focus” . Why is it “Good”? Close enough match in Peak-High-Low XSS target would sound reasonable. Why is it “Optimal Focus” when it’s Rouleur and not Pursuiter?
Doing 80 seconds @ 130% TP (about 3MMP) seems manageable. It’s only 13.6H but I don’t see a way to increase it on such a long workout without blowing Carb consumption through the roof. On a short workout, I can probably reduce the recovery to like 2 minutes and start the next interval before MPA has recovered. Should be possible for a set but not for 3 sets.
By the way, the AI Generator made this one:
Not sure I can follow that AI workout, seems to be too close to 5 times breakthrough territory in the first set.
The 80:20 polarization can make workouts very challenging. If you think this is too much for you, reduce the polarization level to 75:25 or 66:33 and re-run your Forecast. This should result in less challenging workouts.
Also, do send any discrepancies you see in workouts to support so we can have a look at your account and see why these are there. If the generated workouts are not matching your forecasted targets, there could other issues that might need some attention. Thank you for your understanding.
Training Suitability – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
Focus type will vary depending on duration and specificity of the workout along with where you’re at in your plan (Periodization).
Are you relying on Autogen because there aren’t many 2+ hour workouts in the library to choose from?
Yes, and I also wanted to try it out. But now I realized that it goes way beyond the target power for the day to generate a specific type workout. Here’s an example:
I would use the textual guidance to generate a workout using the 3MMP. AI Autgen will generate a “Mixed Pursuiter” focus type workout by using basically anything and going up to 1MMP.
Hence I have to generate the workouts myself:
- for doing the correct power on a certain day
- not blowing through the Carbs
- not doing too short intervals like the Criterium series (my trainer ramps power up in 7-10 seconds)
Workouts in the ~2-3 min power range can be tricky for a few reasons - either you achieve the strain targets in a reasonable amount of time (and have a relatively high difficulty score - like Ronnestads), or you aim to keep difficulty score low, which really drags out the duration of the workout if you’re trying to do repeated ~1-3 MMP efforts.
For example, to achieve ~27 High XSS, you could either do a short(er), hard(er) workout, like one of the Crit series and be done in 75 minutes:
Or you could do a (relatively) easier workout that takes considerably longer - which isn’t an option for some athletes with availability constraints… something like this would take over 2 hours to complete:
You also bring up a good point about glycogen depletion on longer/harder rides… It’s something that we can look to address in future updates to the autogenerated workouts feature.
Might depend on the trainer you have - some are faster to ramp up than others. Also, the ramp back down usually offsets the lag on the front end. You might even consider doing the workout in Slope mode and using your own gearing & cadence to control the efforts. I hesitated a long time before trying one of them, but just did one for the first time a few weeks ago… wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated:
Note that rate of carb depletion is equivalent to power above threshold. That is, the more power you can put out above threshold is physically equivalent to blowing through more carbs. If you want more power, you want to burn more carbs. If you’re trying not to burn carbs in training, you trying not to produce power above threshold and this isn’t the best training.
Please do so. The classic Ronnestad or " A Pain That I’m Used To" are short and work without refueling but still offer some recovery time for a gel. But 350g over 3.5 hours can be tricky especially if you burn a gel in a 2 minute effort but need to do several of them.
I know. I just try to keep fueled for rides longer than an hour.
There is some guidance in the text about keeping fueiled during longer rides. This would apply to both long outdoor rides and workouts as well.