@ManofSteele As I understand it, a 200 Difficulty Score is rare, but I have 257. Should I do something with my Fitness Signature?
How closely do your PP and HIE align with the median band shown in this normalized scatter plot chart?
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Depends on the type of Breakthrough. Since MPA decline is exponential, riding for a long time near threshold means that moving threshold up or down a few watts can make a massive difference in the final analysis.
If you really wanted to, you could try bumping up Threshold a few watts and then hitting âRefreshâ under the MPA chart to see the chart update with the new MPA/difficulty data. Repeat until difficulty maxes around ~170 or so, it might take just a handful of watts - not much if you consider that at ~290 W TP, the error margin of most PMâs will be around 3-6 W.
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I tried playing around and managed to raise my threshold power to 303 just to see a Difficulty Score of 170, as you mentioned. Question is: should I actually save it, since it will affect my future training?Honestly, Iâve been using Xert for a year now, but some things still feel like âmind gamesâ to me. 
Is there any love for Near Breakthroughs in this thread? 
I wasnât watching my MPA during this attack at all - I was just trying to hold on for dear life and push as many watts as I could to hold off the pack at the end of a race. After many years of Xert, itâs still fascinating to me how well MPA tracks with how close I was to my limit for the last ~2 minutes of the race during a 1200m attack to the finish. I figured that was my best chance, rather than trying to outspent some 80kg powerful sprinters:
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First decent hit out in a few weeks. Very happy with it tbh! Too much ice on the roads at the moment to get out so only been zwifting, but thats better than nothing!
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This maybe a daft question. But how do you track you MPA? In Zwift especially?
This was an unusual Silver BT. Doing a downhill race on Rouvy. 24km and about 950m of descent. I know because I rode the Death Road, Bolivia upwards as well
Pedalling at an avg of 99rpm with a max of 122rpm I averaged about 180 watts. Right at the end, as Rouvy does, there was a sprint segment over the last 300 metres.
Still being in gear 22 (Wattbike) I just kept on spinning very fast and hit a 3 year max power of 619 and best numbers between 5 and 37 seconds.
Saying that, I have started using the gym in the last 3 months and my legs are undoubtedly more powerful.
Happy days.
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Not a daft question at all! Zwift doesnât support MPA directly, so the best option is to use a second device (like a Garmin, Hammerhead, or the Xert EBC app) to track your MPA in real-time. Just make sure itâs connected to your power data only (no trainer control).
Then, pair your trainer + power + control to Zwift as usual. This setup lets you ride in Zwift while still seeing your MPA, Magic Buckets, and other Xert metrics on your secondary device.
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That spoils the surprise though!
I love doing a race and then checking back to Xert to see if I could/should have gone harder or if in fact I hard earned a breakthrough 
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I did a Zwift race using the app last night and I went harder than I normally would have on a climb because I could see I could recover after. Was interesting using it.
Still exploded though later This time it was a smaller climb and I just lost a wheel, tried to chase on (wasnât looking at the app) and then on the descent just let some wheels go as I was dripping and needed to catch my breathe and then bang. They group had gone.
Was interesting though seeing how fast you do recover that MPA. I was still hanging at the end and had good fun. Its just something interesting to look at.
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My team had a punchy Zwift Ladder race featuring 2 laps of the âCobbled Climbsâ course in Richmond, which made for an intense ladder race with lots of attacks & counterattacks.
As expected, it was a calm start until the base of the first climb - then it was full gas!
We were pretty evenly matched after the first lap. A teammate and I did try to breakaway on the second lap, but we were reeled back in after 5 min or so. We attacked again over the two climbs & got a small gap, but they were relentless and caught me before the final climb to the finish. The team was able to secure 1st & 2nd, and I was able to out-âsprintâ one of them at the line for 4th place. Sprinting when your MPA is only 500 W is so painful!
I wasnât happy to be caught by the group behind me before the finish, but at least my consolation is that I achieved my first GOLD breakthrough in quite some time! 
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