New to Xert and what compelled me the most to sign up was the Forecast AI and Adaptive Training Adviser. Excited to breakout of my old routine and try something new.
I imported all my available Garmin data from the last 2.5 years and set out to plan a double peak season. I am 57 yrs old and started racing at 30 achieving Cat2 and then primarily Masters’ racing after 35. I broke the 2025 season onto the two main goals, Sea Otter 90 mile hilly gravel race April 11 and Campilaro 4 day race fondo in the French Pyrenees July 24-27. Decided to use and event date of April 11 to peak and ran Forecast AI and then plan to add July 24 event and run Forecast AI again for second peak/race after Sea Otter Gravel date passed.
My weekly training hours are somewhat unlimited and set 22 hrs max, left the General Setting at default except for Recovery Demands slider set to far left, least amount of recovery, and have Monday as default rest day. My question is the Forecast AI training plan does not take advantage of my available weekly hours, most weeks are only 10-12 hrs with many 2 to 3 consecutive rest days. The training load and LSD hours seems low compared to past training, especially now during “base” phase.
What does Xert have as your current training loads (Low, High, & Peak) and what are the target training loads (Low, High, & Peak)? Also, what is your current Event Readiness value? You can find these on the PROGRAM tab of your account.
To me it sounds like either A) Xert doesn’t think you can handle that much volume (unlikely given what you’ve described so far) or B) that the demands of the event aren’t requiring you to train that much more to meet your program goal.
If the latter is the issue, you can modify your program settings, such as modifying your event readiness to increase your durability for the event, which will require more training in advance!
I am still experimenting with the program inputs and, as you suggested, manually set readiness score to 2.0 which has helped add more LSD days to the planner, thanks!
As for the loads I now have for current/today numbers 106/0.9/0.3 and target event 342/47.7/10.6
The Sea Otter 90 miles gravel race will be stacked with some strong competition. Not much is known about course other than 3 laps of 30 miles. Intend to pre-ride at least once and believe there is a gps course available which can be studied.
I’ll keep playing around with the inputs to generate anything more familiar. I have some time to ease into more hours on the bike because of weight training for a few more weeks adds fatigue.
I found the Garmin Connect course file, the race is three laps. What recommendations/advice for Adaptive AI training settings would you suggest if any?
Good stuff! TBH, the program you have looks pretty solid already. Looks like you’ve got a solid base, and Xert will help you build & develop your High & Peak systems before the race!
That’s the anticipated XSS (Low, High, & Peak) for the event. You can adjust the slider on the right to view how Xert projects your training load & fitness signature to change throughout the program moving towards your event!
Its certainly helpful to have an idea of the course, but the course GPS & elevation data alone can’t give us any further information.
What I mean by that is that you could ride the same course whether your Threshold is 200 W or 400 W, but we can’t tell if you’ll have the power to hang with the lead group unless you have someone’s power data from the lead group! With that info, we can perform an MPA analysis with your specific fitness signature to determine if the results are achievable (& give you a plan to get there!).
That’s why the Race AI function requires the course/elevation data in combination with power data (yours or someone else’s) to determine the specific demands of the event and whether your fitness signature is sufficient to reproduce those results! Hope that helps/makes sense!
All makes total sense and happy with how the training plan turned out after implementing the manual Readiness Score you suggested. All that’s left now is the training!
