Hi! I have started Xerting a couple of weeks ago. I’m doing the Continuous Improvement program and have chosen a Moderate-2 weekly improvement rate. The training recommendations are leaning very heavily towards endurance type workouts. I want to do racing in Zwift on a weekly basis, at least once a week. I want to have fun as well. How do I “incorporate” a race in the Xert programme? Be “disobidient” to the training advisor? Taking a rest day, or recovery ride, the day before race day? Thankful for any suggestions!
Great question.
What’s unique about Xert is that you can combine workouts and regular rides in your training interchangeably. First thing you’ll want to do is go back in your activity history and find Zwift rides that match or come close to matching the races you plan to do on Zwift. Favourite these activities.
Now in the planner, you’ll see these on the left when you click Activities. Drag and drop them on the days you plan to race. It’s good to adjust the time to coincide with when they run. Perhaps you can do this for the next 2 or 3 weeks at a time, say.
Now all you need to do is schedule your other training - workouts or activities - in the other days during the week and monitor your training deficit (you can just use the Training Pacer) and make sure you get to a small surplus every so often.
Now, if your training status is yellow at the time you want to train, Xert will recommend an Endurance workout. This is how the polarization process works. You want to do higher intensity when you are fresh to do so and Endurance when your status is “Tired” or yellow. You may want to use your races for your high intensity training. It’s a good idea in fact. But you likely need to fill some of the other days with longer, endurance rides - either do a workout or you could even just do a an easy pace partner ride on Zwift. The more you do of these, the better. Training surpluses will come more often.
Follow this simple strategy, closing the deficit every so often and you’ll be on track with a Moderate-2 consistent gain, getting stronger and stronger with each week. With the mix of long endurance rides and hard Zwift races, you’ll likely reach new personal bests.
Good luck with your training and let us know about your progress!
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Thank you very much. Appreciate your swift (Zwift 
) and thorough answer!
No worries! Keep them coming.
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I think it’s helpful having a platform that is able to incorporate ‘fun’ activities or races into your training routine - after all, most of us are doing this for fun, not because we’re professional cyclists
One thing I wanted to double down on from Armando’s comments earlier that your training status heavily influences the recommendations from Xert… if you’re doing too much intensity, you’re likely going to see a prolonged state of yellow (or even red) status. In these cases, Xert will recommend that you keep the intensity low focusing on endurance workouts while your high & peak energy systems recover.
Ideally, you should aim to be blue status the night before (or morning of) your Zwift races. Use the planner to play around with adding another High-Intensity ride into your week that still allows you to arrive fresh on race day. For any other days that you plan to ride, keep the intensity relatively low and use Xert’s training pacer to identify how much you need to train to stay on pace with your selected Improvement Rate.
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Thank you so much! Saw your reply just now. Really appreciate it!
Very comprehensive and useful answer Armando
