After some initial playing around earlier in the year, I decided that I wanted to use XFAI to improve my performance in cyclocross races - specifically plug a perceived gap in HIE. I have little experience in following training plans and the theory behind it.
Overall Goal
I’m not sure I can quantitatively determine whether my HIE has improved or not because of XFAIs plan. The two reasons are:
- Fitness signature swings. In the past 2.5 months it’s swung so often I’m not sure where it actually is now relative to where it was when I started. I have more questions/points on Fakethroughs, etc. but will defer to the section below.
- The signature in the second image resets to the current point int time every time you adapt the forecast - I’m not sure what my starting 5 min power was at the start date or where else to find it.
Reaching end of plan
I appear to be some way off my 5 min power target, yet XFAI is dialling back my training - it seems like an issue.
Right now I’m kind of at a loss, so will take a reset week. The plan is to get a fresh signature by going out to specifically achieve a breakthrough - hopefully I can manage this. I will then set a new target - unsure whether to keep trying to improve or hold, as it’s now race season. I still worry about signature swings.
Training Advice
Early on I was just using whatever club rides I’d do to satisfy the XSS requirements. As the plan progressed, this became increasingly difficult. Using existing interval sessions I’d try to “fill the bucket” without caring too much about what power I was doing, how long I was holding it for, recovery times, etc.
I’m embarrassed to admit I completely missed the training notes detailing target power, etc. until a few weeks ago. The advice isn’t listed on the planner UI of mobile, but is on the desktop so this might have contributed to missing that info.This made planning sessions much more efficient and I found myself less exhausted at the end of sessions.
Wishlist
- Move scheduled training day. Sometimes the weekly forecast is good overall, but the days need moving around. I currently swap days where it makes sense, taking recovery into account. If i manually lay out availability and reforecast, the plan totally changes. For this reason, I limit reforecasts to once or twice a week so there is some level of weekly goal/consistency. The downside of this is that it renders the traffic lighting of training days useless, because it thinks I’m totally disregarding the plan.
Fakethrough affect on signature
Not strictly XFAI but affects the first point above. It appears that xert is interpreting my fakethroughs as failed attempts of breaking through, when what happened the last two times is that I was crossing a finish line and had to kill my effort, as much as I’d liked to have pulled down that MPA line some more.
Summary
I feel like my HIE has improved - I can hold those types of efforts for longer than I could at the start. The plan has kept me focused, despite some of the issues I ran into above. I’ve also learned a lot about training in general, as I’ve muddled through the last 2/3 months.
