I cheated on my ForecastAI training program a bit this week by riding on Monday & Wednesday - rest days were recommended, but I felt okay & I wanted to ride anyways. I kept the rides relatively shorter (for me) and limited the intensity to sub-LTP efforts. After all, Xert will adapt to what I actually did, right?
Program setup
Target Date: Arbitrarily selected 06 July (~20 weeks remaining)
Goal: 10 min power from 309 W ā 345 W (+36 W)
Specificity: Polar (e.g. More Threshold)
Max hours: 16.1 hrs, estimated (in late June)
Polarization: 80:20 (Default)
Periodization: None (Moved fully to the left from default value)
Recovery Demands: 3 ticks to left of center (e.g. slightly less recovery required)
MIddle weekās green circles from forecast hacking where I pinned planned activities and then ran Adapt Forecast. Luckily I managed to repeat the outdoor activity that I had scheduled myself to do.
We need a fix for the manually planned activity matching. They donāt yet match all of the time as shown by the open 14xss circles. These are days I go to the gym. I need to account for them since they leave me yellow and I had to eventually back off this week. Felt extra tired Tuesday after 3 weeks of solid training.
Goal is an event and training camp in April. Polar Rouleur since the campās in Gironaās mountains and canāt rely on HIE anaerobic power as much as I do here on flatter/rolling terrain.
First week trying to follow the AI training plan. Itās mad at me Sat and Sun because it wanted me to do another 125 XSS of low intensity. Problem is Iām pretty pooped. Iām hopeful it will all workout. Happy that Zert is willing to use my outdoor activities as Iām hoping to mostly ditch the trainer once it warms up. I have power meter pedals on my short term wish list.
This was week 1 of a 17 week plan with the following settings:
Target date: 31st May (17 weeks)
Breakaway specialist (5min) 30 watts increase
Max hours: 9
Specificity: mixed
Recovery demands: three notches to the right
All the rest at default
[Edit:]
I had a race on Thursday, which should have been green, but a warm up activity is marked as the main one. It turns green if I select summarise the day in the settings.
Low intensity workouts have improved dramatically after getting some advice in this thread.
High intensity workouts are a real struggle and I am not sure I can keep up with this plan. Yesterday, I had 16x1 minute intervals and I only managed 12, with increased breaks and cut some to 45 seconds.
My conundrum is that after lowering my TP to what looks realistic and increasing the PP and HIE the high intensity workouts feel too much. I considered lowering all my metrics but then I will get a breakthrough and get them bumped up again.
Maybe I should consider something with more volume and less intensity.
I skipped the HIT forecast on Sunday prior and took the day off instead. That triggered a red dot for Monday. Adapt Forecast changed the scheduled Monday LIT to HIT. The new HIT workout was tough. Ugh! Donāt think I ever ride that hard outdoors on purpose. I donāt race or try to hang in on drop group rides anymore. I cracked on the third set but muddled through to get the points required for green stickers.
My point is you donāt need to complete a workout at 100% compliance to meet your strain goal for the day. Ditto on the recommended HIT workout later in the week. You can see where I skipped an interval in the first three sets below but completed the last set which was easier.
I got through 20 microās before giving in. That earned a minor bump in TP but itās significant because I have now reached my March 31 Goal (10 watt increase in 8-minute power). This my second BT since starting my XFAI plan.
What do you think should happen when TL increases during your plan, or a BT especially, cause your target Goal to be reached prematurely? I still have 5+ weeks to go. Should a notification appear prompting you to re-evaluate your Program settings?
What else would be of benefit?
At this point my plan looks to be easing up and tapering although Iām below max hours I configured (13.5 hours/week) with a TL of 66. At 72 TL Iām already above the original target, most likely due to riding LIT on Rest days.
You can further reduce intensity by lowering the Polarization Level and recast your plan.
Increasing polarity will result in harder workouts on a less frequent basis
Decreasing polarity will result in easier workouts more frequently
Breakaway Specialist and any shorter duration point with Mixed specificity will increase high/peak strain for recommended HIT workouts. You can alternately reduce intensity by changing Athlete Type and Specificity. For example, Polar Climber or GC Specialist.
If you continue to feel itās too much to handle you should experiment with your settings and watch what happens to the plan. See if the HIT workout recommendations look more reasonable to you.
Keep in mind you donāt need to complete all HIT workouts at 100% compliance to achieve the strain goal for the day (and trigger adaptations). Do the best you can. If struggling with certain workouts, try switching to Slope mode where you can more easily control the efforts (work and rest intervals).
Thank you for the suggestions. I reduced the polarity and I will give it a go. I selected breakaway specialist because I am keen on training my weakness, which is the 2-5 minutes power. Seems that my real power (not xertās estimated signature) has a valley starting from 2-5 minutes but itās pretty OK after 10. I hope that that breakaway specialist focuses on improving that part and I did not misunderstood it.
Last week, my signature made the blue and even green segments a pleasure to ride. Demanding but pleasant. But two days ago I got a breakthrough that raised my TP by 22 watts so I am worried that now they may become difficult.
My view is trying to do as much of the interval as I can and sometimes introduce a bit of extra rest instead of abandoning. My workout yesterday was āHardness test level 6ā. True to my power curve, maintaining those 3 minute intervals was simply impossible. The 1 minute were doable and the 30 second pleasant (in a twisted way).
The image below shows what I ended up doing. 75-90 second instead of three plus extra rest. I cut short the workout because I have a broken toe and it started hurting, otherwise I would have probably manage most of it.
My naive (because I havenāt spent time looking at other peopleās data) conclusion is that I am very weak after one minute and hence I am suffering on that particular duration. Or I am mentally weak to sustain the pain for 3-4 minutes
I think you really shouldnāt be struggling that much to complete workouts. To me suggests either
an issue with your fitness signature (easiest to email support to have a look, otherwise there are some resources you can check). Also, if your last BT had data errors it could explain difficulty
an issue with XFAI for some reason recommending workouts that are too hard relative you training load (which is possible as itās beta, and Iāve seen a few people suggesting workouts from XFAI are harder than the āoldā Xert, even @ridgerider2 i think!).
an issue with recovery / fatigue (which is not being picked up by XFAI)
Also, you mention coming back from injury (or still being injured?) so may need to do more base training before getting back to high intensity. Or said another way, maybe the goals youāve put into XFAI are too ambitious or too short term / not allowing enough time for base training
Just some thoughts which hopefully help - not possible from here to figure out which of the above is your issue, but again, if youāre failing workouts then something is probably not right
Donāt have a screenshot handy, but as to the rest ā¦
goal/event settings kind of broke for me midweek when I thought Iād set my available time to 12hours, which would see a projected increase of 2W in 20min capability, over a six week period.
I instantly ended up with a 18.6 week plan and it all got a bit confusing as I was thrown two rest days and 8 further hours of low intensity riding.
Feeling - was feeling fine. After today Iām sore but then I do have a physical issue which gets sore from time to time ā¦ especially doing gym stuff, so thatās normal.
Tomorrow really is rest day. Donāt typically ride Sundays as prefer family activities
Did I miss the option to always exclude a specific day(or days) in the tool somewhere I wonder ā¦.
In the planner, at the bottom of any future day, click the āclockā icon, set as āunavailableā and flip the switch to ādefault for ā¦ā, then save.
This will mark this weekday as unavailable for the future. You can change specific days back to āavailableā later.
To evaluate further would require knowing some more settings.
Program ā
Target Date: April 6?
Specificity:
Focus: Sprint Time Triallist (20:00)
Target Type:
Current TL:
Ending TL:
Program Settings ā
Readiness (if Event is Target Type):
Max hours: 12
Polarization Level (4:1 is default):
Periodization Level (2.5% is default):
Recover Demands (middle is default):
To make Sunday a fixed rest day select clock icon (Availability) on this weekās Sunday, select Unavailable, enable Default for Sundays, Apply, then recast the plan.
Makes sense. Was just joining the thread really as I test using the platform. Iāll try again ahead of Monday to see if I can get everything aligned as I expect.
Wrt point 2, to clarify, the issue is they technically arenāt too hard but more that they are too much. This is something we are actively looking into with the upcoming update. Interestingly it can depend on the ahtlete as some can do more than others, even at the same training status. We are looking to make how much will be prescribed something the user can control.
I am curious about the polarity ratio, its in the 90s for most my forecast but I have it set to default 80:20 so should that be what it moves toward (Iāve got 3.5% periodization so imagine that will impact too)
Interesting to hear. I noticed I get a lot of 3 and a bit stars and higher recommended for high intensity days despite only having ~1.8 training status. For user selection I wouldnāt be too sure what to choose. What I have observed is that often but not always it suggests a 30 minute 4 star workout for what XFAI is saying would be a longer session (so less low intensity) so could improvements in estimated training time also help?
Havent explored more deeply though as itās been a non-issue since I havenāt done the recommendations choosing to ride outdoors or zwift race instead.
I have been through that article and I have experimented with a few different fitness signatures (assuming higher HIE and lower TP and vice versa). When endurance intervals feel right, the high intensity are undoable and vice versa. And then I get a breakthrough and all becomes hard again! I am recovering from a shoulder operation but it was 5 months ago that I am doing 6+ hours a week of riding for the past 3-4 months. I am only holding back in sprinting, affecting the kick you get at the first 10-15 seconds.
I will write to the support. Compared past plans I followed and other platforms, xertās workouts are definitely much harder. Maybe itās my age, my capacity for recovery or maybe I have grew to a very ālazyā rider from all those zwift flat races where I am riding tempo and give it all once in the last 2-4 minutes.
XFAI should account for this already and will get better with the next update. The factors at the moment that govern how much intensity get prescribed are:
You current low, high and peak training and recovery loads.
Your Recovery Demands setting
Your Polarization Level setting.
Your training load increases you need to do the maintain progressive overload towards your goal.
These 4 combine to tell XFAI how much XSS you should do:
1 and 2 determine your red/yellow/blue status before and after the training
3 determines how many days of yellow that will follow
4 determines how much of low, high and peak xss you need to keep pace with increases you need to reach your goal/event
XFAI looks as each of these day to day throughout the plan and makes them fit during the Adapt or Forecast AI process. Itās optimizing and making the puzzle fit.
So if you canāt complete a workout, itās likely due to 2 or 3. You either need more recovery (so youāll get less low, high and peak xss prescribed) or polarization level is too much and getting a 80:20 dose of high/peak might be more than you can handle.
The next version should account for workout duration better and avoid large high/peak XSS days, even if they meet all the above criteria.
In the planner tab, I a see a suggested workout (mostly low intensity) every day, and/or a rest day. Thereās a couple of symbols underneath ā¦. no clock icon underneath any of the days though.
So Iām being daft - I know I must be.
Iāve gone back in to the forecast AI thing to see if I can specify availability in there but it just asks me for hours, polar or not, watts increase, focus and end date (seems I need 12.5hrs a week to improve 20 min capability by 3 watts. Gonna be a tough 9-10 week block this one !!
Luckily I managed to repeat the outdoor activity that I had scheduled myself to do.
I donāt race or try to hang in on drop group rides anymore. I cracked on the third set but muddled through to get the points required for green stickers. 
