I’m pretty sure that all of us, at least once, wondered how much a certain route (outdoor ride) could represent in XSS. When I do outdoor rides on week-ends I try to match what XTP (Xert Training Pacer) tells me to achieve in XSS load. I do use a Garmin EDGE with the Xert XSS field.
Now I was wondering if we could upload a route in to the Xert system and have it determining where/when to put the wattages on the route based on the XSS required to met at the end of the workout. At the moment I find difficult to balance/moderate my pace based on the XSS required and the route being ridden. Last week I was supposed to do at least 230 XSS and ended up with only 185
and had to compensate the missing XSS on Zwift to meet the weekly XSS/load. Anyone has an idea how to optimally leverage your effort and the required XSS, while doing the outdoor ride (maybe use Garmin race pacer? but how to quantify the potential effort)? (Please don’t tell me based on experience, or previous rides… We do 90-130 km DIFFERENT routes every week-end).
Changing wattages to reach an XSS target value will change the Focus Duration of the activity.
If the goal for the day is an endurance level ride (Focus: 3:00:00), riding harder to generate more XSS will lower Focus substantially and change the strain intensity of the ride.
50 XSS per hour is a very different ride than 75 XSS per hour.
Riding with a group makes it difficult to control focus duration. It is what it is. Your group rides will be rated accordingly by difficulty, specificity, and focus. For example, Moderate Polar Climber Ride.
I wouldn’t worry about compensating for “missing XSS” since Xert doesn’t operate on a must-do TSS table format. Daily XSS is a relative range to consider, not an exact number you need to chase down.
The Training Pacer needle reflects a weighted moving average over a rolling 7-day window.
If you stay within the 11am-1pm position, you’ll attain your currently defined ramp rate.
In the example below, 97 pts (a deficit) would return you to neutral position (12 Noon) while the lower goal of 65 pts reflects what you have done in recent past on same day of the week.
The needle might be down during the start of a week and back up by the weekend. No need to worry about exact numbers. In the example above, you could consider 65 as a minimum and 97 as a cap, or ride more today if your schedule permits and push the needle past the Noon position.
For details see this help tip (?) article: Recommended XSS – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
You always have the option to ride more or less depending on your daily schedule, what you prefer to do today (outdoor, indoor, virtual), and what you plan to do during the remainder of the week.
XATA adapts to whatever you decide to do or whatever your group ride dictates based upon the route and intensity required to stay with the group. You can add Xert’s Difficulty and Focus data fields to your Garmin if you’d like to monitor that during group rides.
That’s not possible to my knowledge. If it existed and also gave you pacing to hit both XSS and focus that would be great… even better if it could map out routes you’ve never ridden, but would hit the focus and strain targets… seems complicated though
You need both XSS and focus targets as @ridgerider2 alludes to. If it’s just endurance you’ll probably do 60 XSS per hour… and perhaps you can estimate the duration based on the route + climbing? So duration multiplied by 60 equals XSS
It’s a good thought, but (as is often the case) it depends! The same route can provide a wide range of XSS values & focus durations, depending on how you ride it.
Here’s 3 very similar routes (26-33 km) near me that I can use for a variety of different training options:
Exactly! One of the challenges with group rides is that it becomes harder to do exactly what Xert recommends. That being said, Xert can/will always adjust the recommended training on the following days to account for your group ride(s). And riding with a group also has plenty of benefits - riding harder/longer often generates more strain (XSS) than you might do alone. As long as every single ride isn’t a smash-fest, riding with a group is an excellent way to increase your fitness!
I know you asked NOT for this, but Xert can/does recommend some of your historical activities in the training recommendations, if the historical ride matches the recommended Focus/XSS. Perhaps you can star/favorite a couple routes that you do more frequently than others and those might be recommended if/when you decide to ride on your own!
I generally know in advance the course we will be doing as a group ride. With Garmin it is possible to have a Power guide for a user defined course, and I was wondering if the power guide could be uploaded to Xert and converted in to a ERG workout. With this in mind I could easily adapt it to my focus and XSS. Not bad the idea hein?
I found the way: load road in to Best Bike Splits (BBS), create a race based on a desired TSS scoring (I know it is not the same as XSS but results are very similar), then export in to ERG.
I then import it into Xert as a workout. I then can train or modify the record as I’m pleased and use it during the ride.
