I have a cycling target event in April next year, so that the base phase will start at the end of December. In the meantime I have a running event to target in about 4 weeks from now so I am going to up the running and reduce the cycling till then.
Would it be best to change to Off-season and presumably No decay until after the running event, or would Maintenance be better? I find that the heart rate XSS from runs pretty accurately estimates my tiredeness so I do put them in Xert with XSS rather than use the slider.
Combining your HR derived XSS from running into your cycling is ok but recognize that this in essence contaminates your TL as far as helping you see the relationship between TLs and your fitness signature. But adding HR derived XSS from running to your cycling data help better identify tiredness, i.e. RL (Recovery Load).
Setting your Improvement Rate during the off-season should be based more on how you are feeling since some people need more dramatic easing of their training to regain normal endocrine levels. If your TL is high (4 or more stars), more detraining is better - Off-season or even less. At lower TL (2 stars), you can probably edge higher, even Maintenance.
Yes. No Decay for longer periods of low-intensity is the right choice.
Armando. Thanks that’s very useful, particularly the explanation about Improvement Rate, I’m sure I should be able go to Maintanance without any problem.
I’m combining cycling and running aswell. Although my runnning activities represent only a small portion of my weekly XSS.
My question is if Xert takes into account the different heartrate(zones) / heartrate intensity’s?
In my experience my heartrate is about 10BPM higher for the same intensity with running compared to cycling.