Hi, I used Xert last year to pretty good effect and I signed up again this year. My goals are ultra distance events. 200, 300, 400 km kinds of rides.
However this year it seems determined to grind me into dust in a way that I don’t remember it doing last year.
For example, Xert thinks my FTP is 320. To me this feels a bit high but based on figures I’ve achieved in previous years it’s not a million miles away, and intervals.icu currently thinks my FTP is 309 W. But the long slow distance workouts Xert wants me to do are things like holding 285-odd watts for 2 hours straight. For me 285 W requires a lot of concentration and would certainly require a very easy day afterwards but Xert will put three of those workouts in a row and then follow it up with a high-intensity workout. That’s like three days straight of threshold followed by VO2. This is just not sustainable at all for me.
I’ve tried manually adjusting my curve but as soon as I do a high-intensity workout it bumps my FTP up by 20 W again and I’m back where I was being ground into dust.
If it’s relevant my peak power is abysmal, the most I’ve ever done in my life is 842 W for 5 seconds and 718 W for 15 seconds, I’m definitely a long and slow rider. I’ve seen in other similar threads people mention that this can be a factor but I don’t understand it.
You sound very similar to myself, for the longer distance workouts, you might be better using your own judgement with Xert as guidance. For example, you could use Magic Buckets to make sure you are on track with your required XSS, but construct the session with more ‘zone 2’ along with some ‘tempo’ intervals. I’ve found this quite effective for my longer distance events, so a typical session might be say three hours but with maybe three intervals of twenty to thirty minutes at tempo in the middle of the ride. You can progressively build the ‘tempo’ intervals out in duration or do more of them.
Whenever I’ve felt my signature is a bit off, I try and do a few efforts that I can put into the power curve calculator, so maybe 5 seconds, 5 minutes and a longer 20+ minute effort, I then save the values that the power curve calculator gives me on a recent activity and it usually resets my signature and training to something that feels more in line with how I feel things should be.
I have also found myself at times, particularly on the XFAI type program, surprised at how many high intensity days it advises, but I take it as just that, advice, if I’m not feeling it I just ride easy for longer or reduce my ramp rate and have a few easy days instead.
This is quite tough indeed. I have to compliment you that the advice for “low intensity training” is too hard for trained aerobic athletes. Its between 75% and 100% LTP, so probably 210-283. Most training literature would put that into “tempo”. It is possible in a race, but it is not “low intensity” at all.
There should be a “xss/hour” slider for “low intensity rides” for those who want to go lower than 88% LTP on their low intensity rides. Training literature suggests that the stronger the athlete is, the lower % of FTP his “low intensity long rides” are.
When you adjust signature on a prior BT activity you can use the Extract option to recalc.
You can also Save/lock signature changes on your last activity to tweak a signature and move forward from there. Does that survive the next HIT workout without generating a BT?
Zone 2 Pacer is a 3-diamond workout rated Difficult. Note the rising Difficulty Score after 30 minutes (to 80+).
That’s calculated from the defined interval of 100% LTP at 1% Slope.
Even if your LTP value aligns with your actual LT1 (and you’re riding below it) that is a tiresome effort at 2 hours.
What do you think your actual LT1 wattage threshold is?
You can test that by riding Lucy 90 and adjusting % until the over/unders feel about right then take a look at watt results on the chart.
Regardless of signature alignment you can always choose to ride indoor workouts in Slope mode and control the effort and recovery so Z2 matches your RPE (breathing and/or HR) and HIT days are manageable. Or leverage Magic Buckets to similar effect while free riding (indoors or outdoors). I.e. achieve XSS targets at the difficulty level that works best for you.
IME the HIT-in-a-row on XFAI plans are typically “mild” HIT. Dosages of high/peak that aren’t sufficient to drive form into red for more than a few hours. You’re back to blue the next day. If that’s not your experience, consider adjusting the Recovery Demands slider and/or XSS per Hour slider and update the forecast.
I actually did a long ride on Sunday there and it’s now bumped my FTP up even higher to 334 W based on a steep climb I did. I think I’ll probably follow the shape of the recommended workout (whether it’s low-intensity or high-intensity) but just go based off feel.
I’m open to the issue being that I just need to suck it up as it’s only last year that I started training in a structured way so maybe I just don’t know my limits, but the power targets I’m getting recommended feel way too high. Granted, the weather has been cack here until last week so I was doing a lot of riding on the trainer, maybe I’ll try some of these workouts outside and see if they feel any better. I do use the same power meter (Assioma Pro RS-2) on the trainer as outside though.
I will look at riding some workouts in slope mode and seeing what feels correct.
…which is very low for your TP. Expected is about 30 HiE.
You should maybe flag that ride and get a proper breakthrough where you keep on pedaling until your power slowly falls below 350W. Backpedaling within a breakthrough right on top of a climb will overestimate TP above HiE. It is all about the decline of power in the breakthrough.
Good approach for your “low intensity” training as your LTP will be very high. In Xert “low intensity” is “aerobic training” and “high intensity” does not mean “VO2max-Training” but “anaerobic capacity training”. Traditional VO2max/HIT like 5x6 does count more to “low training load” than “high training load”. So maybe you can try to get your high and peak training load anyways. Magic buckets will help a lot.
Thanks, I ended up manually setting my HiE to 30 and now the workouts look way more sensible, even after it bumped my FTP up to 344 W after today’s ride. Now for example the free ride endurance workouts are giving me a target of 230 W for three hours which feels about right.
Are you describing a ramp test? Usually when I get a breakthrough it’s because I’ve smashed it up a climb, once I get to the top I don’t backpedal or stop pedalling completely but usually drop way off the power to like 150 W. Should I try doing a ramp test to see if that helps it?
Anyway, manually setting my HiE definitely makes the workouts look more like what I’d expect, so thanks for that tip.
