I’ve been using the Xert for about eight weeks now and still trying to understand the Training Advisor.
I’m about half way through my Build phase on my way to the main event in October. I’m set as a Pursuiter rider type. I"m at 3 stars and a Tired status. The part that isn’t making sense for me is the Focus Type and Focus duration. I’m getting recommendations of Endurance and 3 hours. With 6 weeks until my event with a Pursuiter rider type I would expect the Focus metrics to start to shift towards shorter efforts. The duration has been pretty consistent for some time now around 3 hours for a number of weeks. 3hour workouts are not going to put me in an optimal condition for my events which range from a 25 minute points race to a 4 and a half minute team pursuit.
How do I start to push the platform towards a more targeted workouts that are more appropriate for the type of event I am working towards? The workouts I’m doing are focused on VO2 and tabata sessions for the next few weeks before starting into a peak period - essentially ignoring the recommendations.
Your status is most likely tired (yellow) so you are getting endurance workout recommendations. If you stick to endurance workouts for a few days eventually your status will change to fresh (blue) and you will get the high intensity workouts. Even in a Build phase you have to let your body recover from high intensity work.
If you look in your Planner you should be able to see this more clearly, and also see what happens in the future when you schedule different types of workouts.
Or take a rest day? Yellow will probably recover to blue with just endurance workouts, but recovery will be faster with no workouts. The planner (as @guyc mentions) can help you see when your status will change back to blue (and green). You can play with adding recommended workouts to the planner and see how they push out the date at which freshness returns, and then delete them. Try not to be too concerned with always chasing the needle, and dial back the improvement rate when you think it’s time for a rest week (common advice on the forums) and dial back up when rested.
What are you interpreting as 3 hour rides/workouts?
Focus Duration is a point on your power curve and not the length of the workout/ride.
For example – Focus Type: Endurance (Focus: 03:00:00) means should you decide to free ride outdoors that is the focus duration point to shoot for. Since 3 hour focus is at the tail end of the curve you want go slow and easy, below LTP for the most part.
You can use the Focus field on a Garmin or EBC app on your phone to judge how close to your are to that focus point.
Intervals Target indicates a rough watts number to consider for any free form intervals you do during that ride.
Workout Goal XSS number is a ballpark figure to shoot for, however long it takes to get there going slow and easy in this case.
Halfway through Build is when you will start to see higher intensity workouts recommended (when calculated form is not yellow) and Focus will start to narrow towards your selected athlete type.
If you feel fresh but calculated form is yellow, move the Freshness Feedback slider to the right and the recommendations will change.
If riding indoors Load More will generate a wider variety of workouts to choose from or you can use Filter to change things up.
Thanks for the great insights. I am in the Yellow in terms of recovery - even after two days off the bike. So it would seem I need to adjust the Freshness Feedback a bit as ridgerider2 suggested. I typically take one a week off the bike. Completely agree whit the importance of recovery that folks have pointed out. Funny thing is I’m now over 400XSS behind. Since it seems my training is not aligning with the recommendations from Xert, I’ve probably got a bit of tuning to do to get the modeling to come more in-line.
Thanks again for the quick, informative responses. Off to do a bit of tweaking.
If you have set an unrealistic IR (for the moment) go ahead and dial that down (ex, Moderate-2 to Moderate-1) and the pacer needle will update accordingly with adjustments to TL surplus/deficit logic. For a week off you can even change it to Off-Season.
OTOH you don’t need to worry about making up a deficit when one occurs since XATA is based on a rolling 7 day period. If your hours pick back up a week later in line with your IR setting the needle will normalize to reflect that. Ideal position is 11am-1pm but that can dip down into the red on occasion or show a surplus if you exceed the XSS goal often.
How much the needle swings also depends on your weekly schedule.
For example, this morning I was dipped into the red (three days off this week due to family obligations) but today’s long ride brought it back to 11:30am. YMMV
Yellow will probably recover to blue with just endurance workouts, but recovery will be faster with no workouts. The planner (as 
Headed out for a long one today. Enjoy your ride.