Putting time limit on workouts in plan

[nnovod (Nathaniel Novod)]

I find it counter productive to do indoor workouts over 140 minutes. Outdoors I can ride all day, but indoors, be it physical or psychological, I’m done after 2:20 at most. I’m completing a plan, done for the winter months when I ride almost exclusively indoors, and it had scheduled rides that often went well beyond my time limit. I compensated by doing rides that were often more intense than projected (e.g., mixed endurance vs. pure endurance), and getting red or orange status on many rides.

It would be very helpful to put an upper limit on the length of rides for a plan. I know you can put a limit for specific days of the week, and/or for an entire week, but being able to say I never want to ride more than a certain amount of time for the entire plan would be very useful.

[teddygram]

Hi Nathaniel,

The system “does” do exactly what you are asking but I think you are looking for a set it and forget it kind of system which Xert is not that system.

Xert is a “coach” and you and your coach need to interact almost daily if that makes any sense.

Anyways - Xert forecast is default expectancy of indoor planning/riding and expects you will be revolving your plan around indoor training.

You can set your daily limits to 2hrs or 2.5hrs or what ever your upper indoor limit is on the trainer. You will need to “fixed” and “default” that for those days for it to stay put.

You can set your time constraints to whatever you want, here is Xerts definition of how that is applied;

Training Availability

Now that is out of the way - lets dig deeper into what I said earlier about xert is your coach. If it is Friday night and you see Saturday is going to be a beautiful day out and you want to do a 3-hr ride outside. You simply go to your planner and change your workout accordingly;

IE;

Here is my current week plan unchanged

Saturday Opened;

Saturday modified (this isn’t as tricky as you think, you just estimate it as best you can), my rule of thumb for XSS is as follows (someone can comment how they do it, but this works for me)

1 XSS = 1 minute at endurance pace
1.5 XSS = 1 minute at primarily endurance with surges and efforts
1.75 XSS = 1 minute at tempo ride with efforts
2 XSS = Race or breakthrough attempt style ride (all out)

So that means that for this 3hr ride I wanted to do endurance pace 3 x 60min = 180, 1 XSS x 180 = 180XSS total.

This is simply how I estimate rides.

Now planner after saved;

now you need to “pin” that workout and “adapt” your added workout into the system;

Your new adapted week will look like this now;

After you perform the ride, you simply click “adapt” again and it will adapt everything from the outdoor ride and fill in your plan accordingly for the future.

You can do this on any day of the week, as in your buddy tells you Monday he wants to do a “8-hr” endurance ride on Saturday and that’s something you want to do… follow above to enter this for Saturday and Xert will change all the days leading up to that day.

You still need to have the system “programmed” with the amount of hours per week you are willing to dedicate to training, if you go over those hours it “doesn’t” care it just adapts accordingly but it expects you to at minimum meet the hours you committed too.

I hope this helps you and others.

[nnovod (Nathaniel Novod)]

Thank you for the advice. Definitely useful information to adapt the schedule closer to what I want. The trouble I’m having is that Xert appears to think that the only way I can meet my goals is by doing very long rides. When I do less lengthy rides I get yellow and red circles and my numbers (TP, etc.) seem to slowly go down. Maybe I’m being unrealistic and Xert is simply telling me that my goals can not be met unless I do those long rides.

What I’d like is to say here are my goals and here’s the longest ride you can ask me to do, please either give me a plan that works given those criteria or tell me there’s no way.

Here’s a couple of weeks from my training to see what I’ve been doing…

[teddygram]

Hi Nathanial,

You are still thinking inside the box with this. The system is dynamic, it is not cookie cutter - you are telling it what you want and constantly updating or changing your “path” with a guided hand.

The colors on the circles on the planner you are referring to are telling you in a quick look at what the suitability was for the particular ride.

That is defined as;

Green - meets all forecasted training load parameters

Yellow - partially meets forecasted training load (1/3 out of focus)

Red - does not meet forecasted training load

This is just a quick way to look at your previous workout and know if you hit the moving target or not for that day.

I should have asked this at the beginning - are you forecasting a training plan and if so are you using event or goal?

if you are using currently event the system should only be calculating by the amount of hours you set for it weekly or tell you if its not possible to improve (which you then will refer to the goal tab).

[nnovod (Nathaniel Novod)]

I’m using the forecasting AI plan feature with a goal, and all of my yellow and red rides are due to having lower scores than forecast.

[teddygram]

Nathaniel,

Thank you for clarifying that!

What is your “signature decay method” currently set at and at what phase of your training program are you in (Base/Build/Peak)?

If xert is recommending 3hrs of riding you can always select a shorter more intense duration workout for the day as an example it wants me to achieve a 84 xss over 75mins today - I can tell it I have 45mins and it finds me a 84 xss workout to achieve this with more intensity.

I just noticed you are at 4-star training status, maybe @xertedbrain can chime in - is there something to do with how trained he is that makes xert command longer hours?

[ridgerider2]

Go to the Training page and review your plan chart and note the weekly load graph.
If TL flattening out or a steady climb towards your target date?
If you view the Program dialog box, how do Current TL numbers (all three) compare with Target TL?

[nnovod (Nathaniel Novod)]

Where do I find my “signature decay method”? I’m near the end of my training program so I suppose I’m in the peak stage and starting to taper.

[nnovod (Nathaniel Novod)]

My progress has been a bit strange as you can see from the attachments below. I started with a simple plan to raise my TP about 5%. Somehow that evolved into the plan you see, which actually lowers my TP and raises my HIE instead. It looks like the ability to simply set a goal of raising TP has been removed and been replaced with choices in focus and power increase. That’s fine, but it’s unclear what that change did to my original goals.

[ridgerider2]

@nnovod

It looks like the ability to simply set a goal of raising TP has been removed and been replaced with choices in focus and power increase.

That option is still available if you switch to Continuous ATP or change Target Type from Goal to 120 Day Program and select a Focus Duration and Improvement Rate.
You’ll be back operating with a blank calendar following XATA guidelines.

With an XFAI plan periodization with a variable ramp rate applies between your Start and Target dates. That normally means increasing TL over the term. For example, here’s mine from a week ago –

In your case it appears you started with a TL of 4 stars with minimal room to rise.

As a result, your plan chart shows a reduction in weekly load with a further decline during the taper week. That’s due to your current Program settings.

Go to the Program dialog box, select Target Focus Power, and hit up arrow while you watch Target TL increase on the right. You can’t change that setting now without forecasting a new plan, but you can see how the increase in watts affects estimated TL required.

BTW: Signature decay method is under Account Settings, Profile.