Three months ago I was diagnosed with CML, a type of leukemia that is recently (last 20 years) treatable with a group of, basically, miracle drugs. I’m extremely fortunate that the medications are effective for me and are available to me. I hit a very low point in fitness but shortly after treatment began I have been able to use Xert to go from what felt like zero to 95% of where I was 6-8 months ago. I know this isn’t a typical use case for Xert but I have found it invaluable.
Let me show you my first BT (six weeks ago), TP ~120W with XSS skewed funny because of massive decay:
I have had nine BT’s in the past six weeks as my fitness has returned. I want to express gratitude to the Xert team for providing such an engaging platform!
Back to my favorite way to get a breakthrough - longish warmup then a Crit City (Downtown Dolphin) race in Zwift. Push for a breakthrough by halfway, recover a little and then push again at the finish.
This is from a recent coffee ride format on Zwift–2 laps easy and then one lap fulgazzzz. The breakthrough came as I was hanging on to the back of the A riders (I’m not one) and then trying to keep a couple of other pretenders behind me until the finish line. I finished with an impression of my stemcap on my forehead.
Today at Tour de Zwift Í‘ve got a nice breakthrough - I thought my TP would raise but at the end my TP did not raise and only PP and HIE raised
I should have gone harder but there was still a bit to go …
Overall getting 199XSS when rather doing 30 minutes race is not too bad I think
You’ll see a warning under your name whenever 3 weeks have elapsed since last BT event.
Those who frequently race (ZRL or IRL) and ride hard HIIT workouts or challenge themselves outdoors may achieve frequent BTs and rarely see the warning.
Other times you may be riding an extended Base endurance period with Small or No Decay configured and not be worried about BTs until you resume HIIT workouts.
You can always force the issue when fresh/very fresh by riding a BT workout from the library in Slope mode until you reach a failure point on one or more intervals designed to draw MPA down.
Big jump in PP after the ZRL last night. Not the typical zwift sustained effort but it was a tough race all the same.
I’m enjoying doing the hard weekly races to keep pushing fitness up even though I’m still in early build phase. Using xert to help me decide what workout is appropriate depending on how tired I am is great!
Here is my first effort at a BT. Would be interested to know people thoughts? Got confused on the last set of intervals, what setting the trainer should be in slope/auto? I had it on slope 2%, then put it in resistance mode for the last 2 intervals and smashed it. Not sure if this is correct.
Good effort with significant adjustments.
Slope all the way is fine to use and you could raise above 2% if that doesn’t let you max out when you want. Otherwise try shifting gears and raise cadence to same effect.
Resistance mode is similar but requires more tapping.
You want to avoid AUTO (ERG control) when the going gets tough so you can exceed target/duration when able.
Both are similar in that they hold the trainer at a fixed resistance and you can use your gears/cadence to influence how much power you’re actually producing. The difference is that resistance is/was designed to replicate the way that older fluid/magnetic trainers worked.
IMO, I find slope easier to work with, as a slope of 2.0% is consistent across all trainers. On the other hand, I’ve found Resistance settings to be far more variable between trainer manufacturer’s (Wahoo, Tacx, etc.) and even between different models of the same manufacturer. Your experience may vary.
10 Min Warmup to LTP, 10 Min @ LTP, 5 step ladder 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 sec at 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8MMP respectively. All recoveries were 30 sec. Intervals we’re at decreasing slopes.
I did theTour de Zwift Stage 8 ride B in the new Scotland world - joining the 7am group.
It was the Rolling Highland route & short enough with plenty of punchy hills.
I was hoping to get a breakthrough, but generally find in the mornings I am a bit down on power compared to evening rides so wasn’t sure how it would go.
I had a bad end to 2022 training-wise into the first couple of weeks of 2023 with a bad case of flu, so I am hoping to see that with regular training I will see frequent breakthroughs.
