Despite been here for years, I only recently decide to use xert for training with a bit of consistency. The first attempt with the Forecast AI failed miserably. My problems are:
1. Low intensity workouts feel very taxing. All the “lucy in the sky …” workouts for example doable but I need lots of mental strength to complete them. Worse if it has more green like e.g. Higher ground. I will spend the night feeling exhausted and my legs burning and the next day I would be tired.
Question: Are supposed to feel like this or should they feel easy and I should feel rested next day?
2. High Intensity suggested or auto-generated feel just impossible or maybe possible if rest for 6 days afterwards. I had one (that I deleted) that expected me to do a few 2 minute intervals separated by 3 minute rest at just below my 6 week 2min peak power. I could possibly do 75% of it and need rest for a week.
My first thought was that my fitness signature is too high. But I can still get breakthroughs and if I get a fakethrough it will immediately get followed by a breakthrough.
My second is that it’s all mental. I haven’t had done structured training for years and years and I am used to zone 1 social rides and flat zwift races. But the growing fatigue makes me doubt this.
Another thought is that my peak power is very off. It’s my month 4 after a shoulder operation and I still can’t hold the bars. I can’t mash the pedals so I am focused on smoother sprints, aiming for a stable power output for 20-40 seconds instead of the all out efforts. But still, I can’t seem myself putting more than the 1070w peak power.
Question: How can I verify that I don’t have a wrong fitness signature?
Well, lots of other questions but gettnig those two solved would be a very good start.
They shouldn’t feel too hard, but wouldn’t say ‘easy’… high endurance / low tempo… depends how much riding you’ve been doing though and if you’re coming back from injury straight into longer workouts (?) it may feel harder
You can check here or write an email directly to support. You can manually lower peak power in your last BT effort, then click extract for an update… and save if it looks right. But if PP and HIE are overstated it means TP and LTP are likely overstated… so your low intensity rides will get harder, but high intensity should be a bit easier
Are your breakthroughs and workouts in the same conditions eg always indoors or always outdoors? Same powermeter? With a fan (or three) indoors? Also, have you been doing much training / what is your training load / how much as it increased recently? (You could post your progression chart). If ramping a lot and fatigued, when was the last time you took an easier week? You may just need to freshen up, especially if coming back from injury straight into a heavy ramp rate.
Thank you Wesley. I have been riding exclusively indoors and without so much changes in my recent training load is not varied much. The past 3-4 months I have turned to something like a 1-2 minute specialist and I have been avoiding longer efforts or hard sprints. I have been typically doing two types of rides:
Social rides well below my LTP (e.g. steady 180 watts with LTP at 228)
Zwift flat, scratch races where I would ride low-mid tempo but do a very hard 45-120 second effort at the finish.
This type of zwift racing is responsible for all my recent breakthroughs (see images). I know how to adjust my signature as I needed to do it the past or even flag an activity to ignore the breakthrough but if I do it, I will simply get a breakthrough the next ride and get it back to where it was.
I was wondering if there is such a thing that is not modelled by xert, the abibility to repeat difficult efforts, which is usually what a workout requires. I do exceptionally bad in points races where, if I put a huge effort I am simply collapsing afterwards. It’s not unusual for me smash a prime and then get dropped.
If your fitness signature is not properly dialed in the workouts can be too hard. Maybe you can share it and your training load here so you can get some feedback. E.g. if your HIE is too low your LTP will be too high. That can make Lucy in the sky harder than it should be.
As noted above, Lucy in the sky is not easy. It requires real work. For me it is in tempo and low threshold.
You can also look at the difficulty score for the workouts. Start with e.g. two diamonds and increase to see what you can manage.
Btw, do you run the workouts in the Xert app or do you import the .erg file to e.g. Zwift? If the TP in Xert is different from the FTP in Zwift you might get the wrong power targets.
Thank you for your reply Hans. It’s good to now that LSDs are real work. I suppose that’s how I feel them. Definitely not a rest day. In which case, I may need to try to tell the Forecast AI to introduce more rest (fewer hours).
I run the workouts on xert android app and then I am discarding them and keeping zwift’s recording. I am using the same power source (assioma duo) and a wahoo kickr as controllable. Yes, SMART workouts feel different indeed and I prefer it.
My current fitness signature is in the image: TP: 281, PP: 1,001, HIE 21.4, LTP: 228 and I am posting the progression. I am also attaching a power curve from 2023 and 2024 from strava.
I think I will try to increase manually my peak power as the 1001 watts seems a bit low compare to what i am used to. That may affect things.
Lucy in the Sky is 3 min@90% LTP intervals and 1 min@105% LTP RIBs.
While that might become tedious after 60 minutes it should feel relatively easy assuming your LTP aligns closely to LT1 which it does for many users (including me).
Easy enough to test that by monitoring your breath. During the 90% intervals breathing should feel relaxed, conversational pace. Towards end of 105% intervals, it should feel like you’ve migrated to rhythmic breathing where pauses aren’t comfortable. Then a return to conversational pace during the 90% RIBs.
If tempo/SS isn’t your thing (not mine either) you can avoid green through your selections.
All of the pure endurance workouts that stay in blue or blue/aqua (below LTP) should feel easy.
For example, try this one.
If interested, I created a dozen 75-minute LSD session workouts with Bike the World videos and music. To access them I believe you have to join my club which you can leave at any time.
When you say “1-2 min specialist” does that mean you avoid most other focus duration workouts?
In particular, do you do VO2max level workouts (2 min and longer) or prefer micro-intervals?
Have you ever tried a full 120 Day Program phased progression with a Slow to Moderate ramp rate? (45 days Base, 45 days Build, 30 days Peak)
Keep in mind this requires the discipline to not join Zwift races or hard group rides during Base phase. Doesn’t mean you can’t ride on Zwift but you need to do your own thing.
Avoid "green’ during Base if you want or ride a “hard” endurance workout periodically to see how it feels.
You can try different settings within forecast to get more recovery e.g, increase recovery demands, or increase polarization (move to 90:10 from default 80:20)
Good idea - if PP is low, HIE is likely too low, TP will be inflated and LTP will be even more inflated which could be why LSD seems hard. LTP is TP minus 2.5 * HIE from memory, so you are kind of hit twice if HIE is too low. If you are focused on and good at very short efforts, I can well imagine PP is above 1000 watts… also, it’s harder to hit PP indoors vs outdoors.
This is not covered by the signature, but by training load… repeatability should increase with greater TL. When looking at workouts, the thing to check is difficulty score for an idea of whether you may struggle even if not reaching breakthrough levels.
Hey Ridge Rider, thank you very much for the information. It’s great to have a reference point about how a workout should feel. Having read your comment, I think I will leave my signature as is and try a) A “Lucy” workout to see how it feels and then the “After Midnight” you posted. Then based on the observations, I may experiment with Peak Power and HIE. The former is definitely underestimated.
The 1-2 minute “specialist” is a side effect of two health issues:
No super hard 3+ minute efforts since 2018 after a severe exertion headache episode that took about two months to recover from. It’s an area I have been avoiding training since then and it after it happened again last summer I have been proactively not doing those efforts.
No peak power either since August, as I am nursing an operated shoulder after a massive tear. I do race and sprint [edit: all virtually, zwift, indieVelo, etc] but I do long attacks accelerating smoothly and doing stable 45-60s long sprints.
I have never tried anything longer than 5-6 weeks. I would have liked to try a proper long program but with an unusable shoulder I am stuck indoors for 7 more months and the only thing that keeps me motivated is racing. That would be perfect when I start riding outdoors, which is from September.
Thank you for the club suggestion. I will join it!
You can try different settings within forecast to get more recovery e.g, increase recovery demands, or increase polarization (move to 90:10 from default 80:20)
I haven’t noticed this before. It’s inside the “Program” button at the top left. I think I would definitely appreciate a bit more recovery.
Good idea - if PP is low, HIE is likely too low, TP will be inflated and LTP will be even more inflated which could be why LSD seems hard. LTP is TP minus 2.5 * HIE from memory, so you are kind of hit twice if HIE is too low. If you are focused on and good at very short efforts, I can well imagine PP is above 1000 watts… also, it’s harder to hit PP indoors vs outdoors.
The relationship between PP and HIE is great to know. I will try to experiment with a couple of low intensity workouts to get a better feel now that I have lot of information and then I will proceed with the PP change, as I have not been putting real PP efforts recently (recovering from shoulder operation).
This is not covered by the signature, but by training load… repeatability should increase with greater TL. When looking at workouts, the thing to check is difficulty score for an idea of whether you may struggle even if not reaching breakthrough levels.
Good to know. I have been under low training load recently, as I am only riding indoors. I think i need to review a more gradual build up.
Thank you @ridgerider2 and @wescaine for the very educational discussion. Having gone through your responses, I think I can see a possible way to make this work.
First, I did a long test to figure out the power I am switching from conversational to focused rhythmic breathing and assumed that this boundary should be a reasonable LTP. I tested this by then adjusting an LSD workout and another one that I have found terrible (Diary of Jane) and they felt much better and what I would have expected fro a blue and green zone workout.
Our conversation made me realise that probably xert underestimates my potential PP and quite possibly the HIE with the lack of 3-5 minute efforts. Adjusting the PP and HIE on just two breakthrough activities that have skyrocketed my TP, I got the TP and LTP to a much more realistic levels.
I am not 100% sure all those are accurate but the workouts seem sustainable. I also adjusted a bit the recovery rate and gave to the training plan a bit more time and the Forecast API prescribed plan looks much better now.
