I read the buckets datafield guide, did i get it right that:
To fill the LP you ride sub TP, typically the long ride/fatmax…
The middle bucket: above TP, the focus power is best to aim for during the ride as that is also the recommended power
The right (high power): no target power required, its the all out efforts, the aiming to deplete mpa and getting to the purple anaerobic
Would this be a good rule of thumb for each of the 3 buckets?
Think of Peak/Red as sprinting with efforts near your max. Roughly, your peak system will noticeably contribute to efforts above 200% of TP and this increases the higher you go.
Think of High/Yellow as just above threshold (a.k.a. “VO2max” although physiologically power has nothing to do with VO2max… something for another podcast episode!)
Think of Low/Blue as Endurance, LTP intensity or the rest you take between intervals. If you ride at just below TP it is also blue but it is harder to accumulate a lot of low XSS if you ride close to TP.
The recommended power is the intensity that has the combination of high and peak intensity in the desired proportions. Specificity determines your rest-in-between intervals where low specificity means resting near LTP and high specificity means resting at a very low intensity, even coasting.
Thought I’d also chime in and perhaps clarify things for you and any other users that might be pondering about this as well.
You won’t get any Peak XSS just because you depleted MPA and/or got a breakthrough… you can only accumulate Peak XSS at intensities near your Peak Power. This would explain why athletes training to maximize their Peak Power want to ensure their MPA is adequately recovered before doing another short, max effort sprint!
Another way to think about it is with a 20 min max effort (e.g. FTP test), where you aim to hold roughly the same power for the entire effort. As you slowly expend your HIE & your MPA comes down & down, you’re not putting strain on your Peak Power system, but rather accelerating the rate at which you’re putting strain on your Low & High energy systems!
You’ll see this in many of our workouts, where we leverage doing endurance/SS work under fatigue to increase your XSS rate, which makes those workouts fairly time-efficient.
Just dropping this in the most recent bucket related field.
Are buckets meant to update between rides? Today my plan was to accumulate my xss on the commute to and from work.
I assumed that when I went to go home the buckets would be set to my daily target minus the xss I’d accumulated in the morning ride in to work but instead they were just my overall daily target.
Minor as I luckily remembered roughly what I needed for each anyway but are they meant to update?
The buckets reflect the overall daily target unless you select a fill-in-the-gap workout after the first activity has been uploaded.
Or you can roughly estimate what’s left to do and manually enter those target values on the second activity.
It isn’t practical to keep a running tally of the remaining points in every situation.
Thanks, good to know so I pay attention to what is left.