Please break it down for me…this is pasted from XATA. I have put brackets around the things I don’t understand.
1[You have a Training Deficit of 442 XSS points] 2[requiring approximately 8.7 hours of training or about 3.1 activities/workouts]. 3[Sustaining this improvement rate will require about 19.8 hours of training per week based on your recent training history]. 4[Estimated training needed is 8.7 hours / 3.1 activities].
…It is Tuesday 11:28 PM…
[1] I’m 422 XSS behind. Does this mean I have 422 XSS left to do this week? Or should I have done 422 XSS more in total on Monday (yesterday) and today?
[2] Should I do 8.7 hours more this week?
[3] 19.8, that’s a lot of hours. I train quite a bit of LSD. Would the advice be less hours if I usually trained harder? I have only done 2.5 h this week (Mon and Tue).
[4] 2.5 h + 8.7 h = 11.2 h, not 19.8 h. Why does it not say 17.3 (19.8 h - 2.5 h = 17.3 h)?
Don’t have answers for the math differences, but I think it’s best to look at this from a higher level.
The advice is as of this moment based on your current settings and historical activities.
Your IR (improvement rate) setting controls the XSS and hours/week guidance along with intensity…
What is ramp rate set to currently?
As a test dial IR down a level and note the immediate changes to XATA and the pacer needle.
XATA is based on a rolling seven day period and recognizes weekly patterns. If you rode long last Tuesday that’s noted in recommendations for this Tuesday. However, that’s not to say you must do the same thing this week.
XATA is advice and general guidance, not a prescription down to the minute or day. You are free to change your schedule and ride volume and allocate your days over the week as you see fit. You could ride longer to compensate for a deficit or create a surplus by exceeding a daily target. But there is no need to wipe out a deficit or worry about a surplus. The numbers even out over the rolling seven days.
Your main goal is to keep the pacer needle pointing up between 11am and 1pm if you want to achieve the TL ramp rate you established by your IR setting. If TL becomes too much to handle, lower IR for a week or take extra rest days and ignore any deficit created. It will be gone next week if you are back “on schedule”.
Think of XATA’s numbers as guidelines for a range of possibilities. You decide what to do within those guidelines. Your legs (and schedule) will tell you if you have taken on too much or can handle even more.
Currently set at Moderate+1. Not much training the week before due to some knee pain.
I understand I should keep an eye on the arrows. Still, it would be beneficial to understand how much XATA says (time, XSS) I should train in a given week. At the moment, I’m not sure what date interval it means.
Your points [1] and [2] are based on the rolling week taking into account what you’ve done in the last 6 days (so roughly speaking the shortfall is what you need to do 7th day to get rid of the deficit), while point [3] is for a full week, in total. So if you’ve had a few days off the deficit can quickly ramp up. As @ridgerider2 says, you don’t have to get rid of it all in one or two days though. Or you can lower the improvement rate for the week if you’re having a few days off
The number of hours is based on training load / recent volume and improvement rate, so if you need 19 hours a week you either have a very high TL, very aggressive improvement rate, or some combination… you should set the improvement rate to fit the available hours.
And you are right it’s XSS based so if you increase intensity the hours will come down. Though whether that’s a good idea is another question