Hey Everyone
I have a 20 minute bike ride to work, pretty much all open road/very few stops.
I wonder what peoples thoughts are on how I can utilize these rides for fitness.
I am a “rouleur” with Mod improvement and I am in the build phase right now. Next event 60 km gravel race July 9. I ride between 8-12 hours a week, average is 9 and get 250 kms a week.
Best
Adam
And furthermore, I generate typically 33XSS on these rides if I’m going at a LTP pace with a few sprints for KOM attempts etc. Are these useful XSS’s? Like should I count them toward my weekly training plan?
Any takers : )
20 minutes is pretty short. Not really sure you can do really much in that time to improve your fitness
I suspect if the intent is to maintain your fitness this 20 minutes (40 minutes per day) is always more worthwhile than sitting in a car… no such thing as no benefit to riding your bike 
then let Xert do its thing and see what it tells you for the fitness tracker.
20 mins there/back every day I am guessing is probably 50 plus miles a week? Thats some benefit on its own if added to dedicated training… Personally I would just take the added cardio benefit and not worry too much about structuring commutes, as someone else said its much better than sitting in a car.
Before the pandemic / my office was permanently closed / working from home full time I used to cycle to work 2-3 times a week, I would have a pannier with a laptop / lunch which would weight several kg, I felt I got a fair bit of training benefit from carrying that weight!
In your shoes I would (when the opportunities allow) just extend the journey in / home, maybe couple of times a week extend the home journey to 1hour tempo effort?