I have two Xert accounts-- one for cycling and one for running. That means I have to add a lot of workouts manually to both accounts to keep my fitness signatures separate. In my running account, I’m trying to plan out my next few days. Tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday are currently yellow and Saturday is blue. One of the recommended workouts is “Sweetspot @90% - Classic 2x20.” I have a training load of about 80. I normally run a ramp rate of “aggressive 1” but I’ve been on “maintenance” for the last three days trying to shed some fatigue.
If I “favorite” the 2x20 workout and drag it into tomorrow’s blank entry in the fitness planner (and Friday’s as well), Saturday stays blue. In fact, I can drag a much harder workout (e.g. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) to both Thursday and Friday-- Saturday still stays blue.
But because these will probably be cycling workouts, I will have to manually add the workout. But if I try to manually enter exactly the same data (duration: 79; XSS: 88; Activity Type: Cycling; Focus: Endurance; Specificity: Pure) just to Thursday, Saturday turns yellow.
I’ve tried logging in and logging out. I’ve also tried recalculating the progression. How can I fix this problem.
Thanks. We’ll have a look. I suspect it may be how the system is splitting the low/high/peak XSS for the Endurance manual (which may add high/peak load incorrectly which is the only way to get to yellow). One thing you can try is to go to an empty week and and add in the same Endurance activities and see what that table shows for high and peak XSS. Should both be 0.
Yes. It does appear that Endurance has a very small component of high XSS. Using Century Rider or Triathlete eliminates this. We’ll need to identify why that is happening. Very surprised that it was just enough to convert from blue to yellow. Must have been right on the very border.
Armando, thanks for the reply. But it raises two other questions (kinda like peeling an onion, eh?). First, in situations like this, do you think I can just tweak the focus setting to keep the stars the “right” color based on what it was predicted to be when I drag the full training? Second, I did a 2 hour recovery workout yesterday and Tuesday that were purely steady state well below my LTP. But Xert ranked it as “pure” time trial. Shouldn’t the focus be listed as “triathlete” or “century rider”?
We’ve only recently adjusted Focus for efforts below threshold. Note that anything an hour or more is essentially 100% low. The focus power to duration was added to scale efforts below TP more effectively. You can tweak them of course but be aware what I just referred to.
Gotcha. I tend to do a lot of work just above and below threshold (about 5-10%). I’m assuming that, in terms of focus, that’s really the realm of “time trial”?
This gets so confusing sometimes. An example might help. In my cycling account, I’m planning an “over under” workout for today-- long intervals alternating 1min at 105% and 2min at 95% LT. On average, they are 98.3% so I called it a “time trial” workout. But 105% LT is right around where Coggan and pegs “20 minute power” as that’s the standard FTP test. That suggests it should be a “sprint time trial” workout" (I think that was related to your point). On the other extreme, when I create my workout with the above pattern in the workout designer, the designer calls it an “endurance” workout. I still tend to think of workouts in terms of % LT-- a carry-over from years of training the old-fashioned way. I need to go back to relearn the stuff about the different power strains. ;-(
We put everything at 20 minute power or longer as “Endurance” since the contribution of high and peak is very little. If Specificity Rating is polar, it can be even less. Most of the strain is on the lower intensity system, even at 20 minute power, so we say it is “Endurance”. I’m trying to figure out a better way to categorize these … perhaps as “Threshold” but the math isn’t consistent so haven’t done that yet. You could end up with a Threshold workout (mostly low, little bit high/peak) without any threshold in it.
When we implement Endurance Energy, it is based on LTP so there might be a way to use an Endurance Energy category to reflect the differences between a ride at <LTP to one at 20 minute power.