Taper week is jacked - five days high intensity including 3.5 hours the day before my event?!

I don’t understand this taper week at all. Maybe the short intensity planned Monday thru Thursday is to keep me sharp, but 3.5 hours high intensity before my 84 mile grand fondo with 7500+ feet of climbing on Saturday is jacked.

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TL;DR I think your taper week is going to be a relative walk-in-the-park especially if you scale back on Friday. :slight_smile:

The prior week looks a bit sparse to have gone to green (v. fresh) twice.
To put more in context would require a snapshot of the full two weeks showing completed training, form gradient bar, and summary stats for both.
What is the target Focus Duration for the event?
When did the plan start?
How often did you need to run Adapt Forecast during the plan?
What has been your longest weekly ride in hours?

Other than the long ride on Friday (which does seem off and something I’d nix or scale back on) the rest of the week looks rather tame. Enough to retain your fitness level including some minor HIT work.

HIT in Xert is any activity with time spent > TP which will include “mild” HIT with Polar specificity (mostly endurance). In your case likely some opener intervals at specified Focus with a Difficulty Rating that never exceeds Moderate (2 to 2-1/2 diamonds).
At your 3-1/2 status stars level that means short recoveries.
The matchstick XSS ratio tells the story. Take a look at the yellow/red (high/peak) portions on Mon, Tue and Wed. Thu and Fri are barely visible (smidgen of HIT).

Compare those matchsticks to a couple of my recent HIT days; one with a BT effort.



The more peak/red in relation to high/yellow, the shorter the Focus Duration result.
I imagine your HIT days will be rated Sprint TT (20-min) or Climber (10-min) Focus.

You can apply quick math to roughly estimate Difficulty Score (diamond count) and associated Rating for a forecast activity. Divide total XSS by estimated hours duration. That’s the number I entered above the arrows.

Difficulty Rating/Score –
Easy: <45-50 (1 to 1.5 diamonds)
Moderate: 50-75 (2 to 2.5 diamonds) ← highest you reach during the week
Difficult: 75-110 (3 to 3.5 diamonds)
Tough: 110-150 (4 to 4.5 diamonds)
Hard: >150 (5 diamonds)

The quick math is a rough estimate since DS (Difficulty Score) is based on highest value attained during an activity from accumulated strain. A long Z2 ride will show increasing DS (shaded graph portion) even when you ride “easy” entirely below LTP. Example:

IME the single biggest difference between XFAI and traditional LIT/HIT/Rest plans is the distribution of Low/High/Peak strain. Allotted dosages result in more HIT days per week including sequential days, but you do indeed recover by the next day.
If you push things well beyond allocated targets (like I did on my BT day above), the Adapt Forecast warning appears which will remove upcoming HIT to rebalance and optimize the plan.
You won’t be doing that since you’ve reached taper week, but you can manually adjust the plan as you see fit. I’d likely choose to ride an hour or so easy on Friday and toss in a few opener intervals with a Climber Focus. YMMV

Enjoy your event. :+1:

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Thank you for the quick and detailed response. Much appreciated. I’m new to Xert and didn’t understand all the details include int he Planner user interface.

I cut and pasted my last week and this week Xert below for reference.

The Cheaha Challenge is 82 mile road race with 6500 ft of elevation. I uploaded last year’s race when I created my Xert AI training plan. Interestingly the target Duration is only 1h and Focus is GC Specialist - 8:59. Not sure how Xert determined those targets given the race has 4 10 minute above threshold climbs, a dozen 3-5 minute VO2 climbs and a 20 minute 3 mile climb.

Not sure how much time you want to spend discussing with me but here is a link to my Strava from last year: Cheaha Challenge | Ride | Strava

I started the plan back in January or February when I first started Xert. I’ve adapted the forecast maybe 3 or 4 times. I adapted it on Sunday after my long Saturday ride. I was sick Tuesday thru Thursday which is why the freshness bar went Green and so I tried to “make up for it” with a long Cheaha simulation on Saturday.

I rode at least ten 4-5 hour training rides starting in December primarily indoors on Zwift (DWGZ Hot Hundo) to build my base for the event.

Thank you for explanation of Xert “high intensity”. I agree most of the workouts this week are endurance with enough above TP work to stay sharp.

Xert’s taper week (except for Saturday 3.5 hours high intensity that I will change to Openers) is similar to my human coach’s Training Peaks plan from last year. VO2 and Tempo recommended for Wednesday, Sweet Spot on Thursday and Recovery on Friday.