moving magic buckets & indoor trainer to a new thread to not divert the original thread.
Direct links below.
concept:
with indoor trainer, using either the PWR, slope or resistance settings, which currently have a small increment setting (eg ERG mode is +5/-5W a click) giving access to quick buttons, eg having the different TGT powers from that session’s magic buckets, or having your 50% 60% 95% 110% and 150% FTP values, so you can quickly move from a recovery resistance to a high effort, or anaerobe, keep that as long as you want and switch back to a recovery, to fill your magic buttons.
If I were riding a workout in AUTO or Slope mode on EBC it would be useful to watch how the buckets are filling but I can’t imagine wanting to “free ride” under ERG control.
Indoors you’ll settle on a Slope % that supports hitting the range of target watts required in combo with gears/cadence. One tap (AUTO to Slope) and you’re there.
Since the release of Magic Buckets I’ve been testing the app indoors in parallel with ERG controlled workouts to see how they compare.
Magic Buckets runs on my Garmin 830 while EBC on phone controls the trainer.
My first test was with an automatic LIT workout from my Planner which is an arbitrary Event forecast I created for Mixed Puncheur (Hilly Road Race) with a Readiness level of 2.5.
After a few intervals I realized I could have switched EBC to Slope mode and monitored Magic Buckets on the Garmin instead. The Magic Endurance screen for LIT is intuitive and it’s easy to fill the Low bucket hovering near target watts. Outdoors the challenge would be avoiding surges above TP and sticking to LTP/Z2 spinning.
Today I tested MB with a HIT workout comprised of Mixed Puncheur for ~2.5 hours.
I chose to do an Autogen workout since that would be a simple workout.
In this case three sets of five intervals for 49 secs starting @ 195% TP declining to 180% on the last set with ~8 minutes RIB.
I didn’t want to tackle anything like that which dove into BT territory right away.
Initially I thought the AI Generated workout looked easier. That was wishful thinking.
I started EBC in AUTO mode along with MB running on an G830 Indoor profile with power and HR paired.
I came up short on the first interval by 1 sec, then 4 sec on the second interval, and 12 and 15 secs on the third and fourth. Rather than attempt the fifth under ERG control I tapped EBC AUTO to switch to Slope and concentrated on MB instead.
My interval efforts got shorter right away at durations I could maintain. As soon as I started fading below target watts I switched to rest mode.
It took a few intervals to understand how Magic Intervals work. The interval count started at 49 and I ended up 34 which adjusts along the way based on what you do…
There is no way I could have finished the Autogen workout under ERG control.
One surpise was I expected target watts might decline like Autogen works.
Instead the watt target can rise depending on how well you’re doing and at what duration.
I salute those who are about to die trying to maintain a Challenge Level > 5. I got up to 6 on a couple intervals but decided 5 was plenty enough on a 2+ hour workout. YMMV
Here is the result –
MB beat me up on this HIT workout and it took perservance to finish it with 5 to go. Ugh!
I even got the “BT pending” warning on the last interval and briefly stood up but legs said “Nah!”.
I see how you can manipulate results by how much you put into each interval and how long you can hold them. My effort ended up rated 3-diamond Difficulty but by focusing on the Challenge Level you could kick yourself into 4 to 5 diamond Dfficulty if you’re up for it. I’d need to wait until 4+ status stars before trying to do that.
I think adding ERG control to MB would defeat the purpose and main advantage to Magic Buckets. I.e. the ability to free ride to focus – under your control – on days when you don’t want to follow a structured workout outdoors or indoors.
On those days simply jump on your bike or trainer and start riding. No buttons to push other than Start.
Nice ride! I agree erg is perhaps not the right tool, esssentially i meant easily switching between various effort levels for the MB tgts. Ill have a tgorough read of your post. I agree MB seems to bring a new form of motivation to a ride, less formally structured but even more focused on the outcome (or so it seems during my first experiences?) either way, cant wait to ride outside with it and weather is picking up
Note you can also just record and control everything on your Garmin Edge. It is possible to initially set the trainer to slope mode, and then adjust to a power target later in the workout. I think this can work well if you want to do the intervals first and then spinn some endurance at the end to fill up your Xlss. That’s how I did the workout below. Once the High Intensity stuff was finished I adjusted the power target on my Garmin Edge to fit the recommended target from Magic Buckets.
It looks like the autogen workout was 2.5 hours, the catalog workout was 2 hours, and the Magic Buckets ended up in the middle at 2.25 hours. Although you started in ERG so maybe you could be done closer to 2 hours with MB from start.
I definitely could have shortened the ride had I not started in ERG or been able to go longer on some intervals or not waited for the recovery countdown to reach zero before going again. That would have raised the Challenge Level and associated Difficulty (XSS per hour).
As long as you can continue riding to some level of compliance (target watts at whatever durations you can muster) you are going to hit your low, high, peak numbers. MB virtually ensures that. You’ll notice the buckets will fill in a tight proportional rate to each other. Outdoors that will be a different story if you decide to insert your MB HIT intervals in the middle of a long ride and you’ve accumulated a lot of Low or High/Peak surges before you get started.
My only difference was in Low because I extended cooldown for a bit after I filled the buckets.
I can forsee days when I’m not up for the challenge (too many intervals to go) or run out of road outdoors before filling the buckets. But if you can hang in there and keep going you’ll fill the buckets.
One difference to keep in mind is Today’s goal versus a selected workout. If a workout is scheduled on the Planner or selected on the Training page, MB will pick up the XSS targets for that workout. Those numbers could be more or less than the suggested low/high/peak values for the day but the workout meets Suitability requirements.
MB definitely adds a new dimension to training that a lot of users are going to enjoy.
If I do an easy ride in the morning but want to do the main workout in the afternoon, how would i get the Magic Buckets to take into account the XSS from the morning ride into the targets as when I’ve tried something similar ie stopped my Garmin for some reason at the lunch stop it it gives me the original targets when I restart my Garmin
Thanks
Not sure there is any answer anywhere for this but is there a reason why these magic buckets can not be part of the remote player page? Xert - Login
I normally just start up an activity on the Xert player on my phone so I can get the remote player updating to use information when I stream my rides indoors. Be nice to have the buckets in the player as well to use indoors without the need to use a garmin
If this has been answered anywhere before if you can point me in the direction be great
Hmm… hadn’t thought about it that way but someone could conceivably leave the Planner blank, never select or choose a workout, and every day MB would sync with Today’s Specificity, Focus Power and XSS (low, high, peak). Then head out (or in) and do whatever you want within those guidelines with the option to color outside the lines.
OTOH I think it might get tedious free riding MB every day indoors. I like to ride most LIT in AUTO mode watching the Session Player or Netflix or YT on the big screen. Or tackle a variety of HIT workouts in Slope mode where the only thing that really matters is watching the rainbow gauge on EBC or the Remote/Session Player.
I’ll likely rely on MB for days when I want to ride HIT or LIT outdoors. This is HUGE feature add IMO.
Those who follow my posts know I have always been a proponent of Free Ride to Focus.
MB streamlines the process and makes it easy to take advantage of this unique way to train.
Non-Garmin users driven by FOMO might want to consider picking up a used G530 (or 520Plus).
Otherwise I imagine Xert’s next project will be adding XMB and XFAI functionality to EBC.
Now that I see how it works I’ll also use MB indoors in virtual world when I want.
I don’t subscribe to Zwift but use the free 25k once a month for kicks. Turns out you can keep going past that limit on a single ride.
If you really want to game the Zwift free 25km per month you can just do Road to Sky up the Alpe which is just 17km (and not descend).
Then you can get a second ride in of any distance.
I think either Armando or Scott (or maybe both) have said adding a version of the magic buckets to EBC is somewhere on the development list. I don’t think they gave a timeline and it sounds like they may have a pretty long list of items in development.
I believe they want to develop it on one platform first (Garmin) and get the feedback before they replicate this on the other platforms. There are typically a few changes to the concept after the first release.
Taking advantage of this open thread I would like to launch a request… It would be awesome to have in the EBC app a Magic Bullets ERG mode for our indoor training, it could work like that… autocalculate power intervals and we could hit a button.to enter rest mode.
