Thanks @ridgerider2 and @xertedbrain. A lot to digest in that last post. I think clearly part of my challenge is that my mindset is that of a pretty traditional phased program and the vocabulary that goes along with it. I think also the fact that I do most of my workouts outdoors in a fairly urban/suburban sprawl geography where stops are inevitable us also adding to my confusion. Xert definitely seems more tailored to indoor training but I am convinced it can work well for an outdoor regimen as well since other people seem to have no trouble doing so. I just have to gain a better understanding of some of the logic in the system, which you guys have done a great job of helping me with and I sincerely appreciate the time and effort.
I do definitely take rest periods in my training. My favorite weeks!. @ridgerider2ās note about the status needle and what happens if I take a week off triggered a lightbulb for me. Back to the drawing board for a few weeks to try some different approaches.
In the hands of a knowledgeable user, Xert can guide you through indoor and outdoor training, optimizing outcomes based on your availability and target focus/event. Only the top end coaches know how to prescribe outdoor unstructured rides and activities as part of your training. Many frown upon it and insist you follow their structured plan as much as possible.
Top end coaches are able to match what Xert does. A smaller subset of them can out perform it. A knowledgeable Xert user can guide their own training, gaining a level of self-coaching that will be hard to surpass. The best coaches are the ones that can bring all that Xert has to bear developing a comprehensive training program that combines indoor, outdoor, fun rides, skills training, psychology, race preparation and race events, optimizing results in the process based upon the athleteās feedback. Itās a continuous feedback process just as it is in Xert. It has to be in order to be optimized.
There is better way to measure āactiveā time and apply it to averages. Moving time is just an estimate but doesnāt quite capture it. As weāve mentioned before, sprinting between stops at 600W should not average out to 600W because you had to stop at stoplights. (There are people that sprint when they approach a red light so that they have less moving time and higher speed averages. Whatās up with that?)
So we have some better ideas but the changes go pretty deep into all our software so not something we can easily add but itās in the plans.
Another zombie resurrection by me. Since this thread Iāve been more disciplined with breaking up rides into 2 files if Iām stopping for lunch or some other extended pause. This has gotten my average weekly ride time (and suggested for future weeks) down to an appropriate level. However, today I had a massive puncture that, after about 50 minutes of attempts to fix, resulted in the end of my ride. I did not stop the ride recording initially because most punctures I can sort out in <10min. But now I want to chop off that last hour of no activity because it will throw off my recommendations for next week. The only tool Iām aware of out there that will do this is at fitfiletools. So, did the trimming quick and easy uploaded to XERT, but! Now when I open the ride all the stats show the ride lasting 1:59 (including non-moving time at stoplights) However, from the activities dashboard it still clearly shows a duration of 2:51. Why would this be?
Iāve found the fitfilestools a bit strange when I upload the files into Xert. I recently did a 600km audax, so had to record it as one activity to get my ride validated by the Audax organiser, Xert however doesnāt like rides over 24hours so I had to split the ride. When I uploaded the two files the timing was way out.
What was your ride recorded with? I am seeing similar behavior from a ride today.
Trimmed out the bogus section but Duration under Activity tab (or table view) still shows the longer time while activity details is correct time for the recorded section.
Unfortunately it didnāt work,once Iāve split the route I can only export either a GPX file, which Xert wonāt accept, or export the original file which is too long due to the 24hour cut off. On a positive note, my Strava now shows the ride split properly without the sleep section.
@ridgerider2, ride was recorded with Pioneer CA-600 head unit: a dedicated bicycle gps computer. I dont know a ton about the actual formatting of data in a .fit file, but i do know that before and after the actual GPS waypoint recordings (mine is once per second of elapsed time) there is some meta data about the ride. I suspect that fitfiletools is not modifying that meta data which probably still states the unmodified duration of the ride and is what is displaying on the main activities dashboard. Probably a quick coding fixā¦if xert is even using that particular number in the training advisor algorith?
You can use Garmin Basecamp (free Windows app) to view FIT file data.
There is a second-by-second ālegā table along with header info like Elapsed Time.
In my case the battery bonked so head unit failed to capture the entire ride. Didnāt charge up to resume and end the ride until many hours later. My start/end times in the table were incorrect. Easy enough to remove the empty hours with FitFileTools, but it doesnāt rescan the table to adjust Elapsed Time.
My bogus ride Duration shows as 07:42:16 under Activities but shows as 00:00 - 01:36:45 (01:36:45) under activity details.
As long as XATA uses 01:35:45 for all calcs the issue is mute, but Iām not sure about that.
Pacer needle showed a big jump that day but viewing same day next week on Planner looks normal for TL projection.
The other option would be to ask FitFileTools to recalc Elapsed Time when you remove a section. It makes sense that it should work that way.
Agreed: as long as XATA uses the actual duration from the start to the stop data, then this issue is a non-issue. Would be nice to know for sure if any of the XERT admins are aroundā¦?
Either way, I sent in an email to the fitfiletools site to notify them of this issue and ask for a possible fix. Then I felt guilty and donated a few bucks.
