Introducing Group Ride Data Analytics with Flyby.  This new feature from Xert Breakthrough Training allows athletes, coaches and team directors to analyze team data all on one screen.  Xert now detects when an activity was performed with other Xert users and enables you to add their data to your chart, see who was in front / behind and by how much and even playback the ride using GPS flyby on Google Maps.  It’s the first of its kind to allow data from multiple athletes to be displayed and analyzed all on one screen.

Sharing Group Ride Data

Comparing your performance against others that are at the same level as you is a great way to stay motivated and track your progress over time.  Camaraderie, group ride competitions and comparing your results with others are what make group rides and racing so much fun.

Open a recent activity on Xert where you rode with other riders.  At the top of the page, you will see a notification indicating that the activity is a group activity and notify you if any other users have shared their ride data with you!

Click the first link to access this help page.  Click the second link to share your data with the other group riders.  In the notification above, you can see that Clark K has already shared their data with the group. After sharing an activity with the Group or Publicly, other members of the group activity will receive a pop-up notification in Xert. Again, they can choose to share your data back from the link in the notification.

Using Group Analytics

Use the Advanced Stats tab to open the Group Analysis information panel.  You’ll be presented with this panel on the right with a 2 or more segments.  The first segment is the Entire Ride and shows all the squad members you rode together with on the ride.  The second segment shows the information for the Current Selection on the chart/map.  To use the Current Selection, click-and-drag a selection on the chart and use the Refresh icon on the top right of the segment card to update the summary information:

If you have starred segments on Strava and you are a Premium Strava user, you’ll also see all these segments on the right panel.

Summary Stats

For each segment on the right panel, Xert will calculate the following:

1. Power : the average power for the rider over the duration of the segment.
2. Maximal Effort Time : How much time was the rider at their max.
3. In Front : The percentage of time the rider was ahead of the other riders.

Group FlyBy and Rider Data

Use the checkbox beside each user on the segment card to enable their data to appear on the chart.  Once enabled, mouse over the chart to see each rider’s data as well as their speed and gap relative to you. Use the legend to hide/show each user’s power, mpa or speed data as well as other data from the ride:

View the Google Map to see where each rider is on the map as you mouse over the data:

Playback

Use the play button and the slider above the chart to playback the data together with the Google Map.  You can also adjust the playback speed to clicking the menu beside the play button: 

Pause the playback using the same button.  Using the scrollbar to scrub to a position in the ride/segment you wish to look deeper into.  The guide on the map will align with the scroll position to provide the data at that point.

Note that the map switches to directional perspective mode during playback. Changing the zoom or direction will maintain the choice until the segment is reloaded.

Adjusting other Rider’s Data

Sometimes a rider’s bike computer may not synchronize with a global time clock and their position on the map will be shown ahead or behind where they may have actually have ridden.  Their In front calculation may also be affected by this.  Use the ellipses beside the user’s name on the segment summary on the panel to adjust their Time Shift.  Use the refresh button to apply the change to the chart and map.

Activity Sharing Options

Activity sharing has been updated to allow greater control on who can view your activity data:

1. Public – All Xert users will see your data as part of a group ride and your activity data will also be visible to anyone on the Internet that opens the URL to the Activity.
2. Group – All those that rode with you during this activity will be able to see your data when they open the Group Analysis tab.
3. Default – The default sharing option allows coach community coaches and members of a squad community that you belong to open and view this activity’s data.
4. Private – This disables all sharing for the activity, including coaches and squad members.

Creating Group Discussions

Bring on the smack talk in the group discussion! Xert’s integration with Rocket.Chat can be used to discuss your group activities. To start a new group ride discussion, click the Group Chat button, which will directly open the group discussion in Rocket.Chat. You will only be able to click the Group Chat button once you’ve agreed to share your data with the Group.

Setting Up Squad Communities

In order to protect each users private data, group analytics feature is only available to those that shared their data with the group members. This easiest way to enable sharing with other Xert users is to use a Squad Community.  Squad members agree to share their data with other squad members so this community is used to display group ride data.  When you create a squad community with your riding partners, Xert will look for other squad members that your rode with and if they happened to ride together with you, you’ll see them on the Group Analytics tab information.

To get your riding partners into a squad community, follow these steps:

1. 1. Ask your riding partners if a squad community has been created.  If so, ask them for the Join URL to the squad community and use that to join the community.  You’re all set if the community has already be set up.
   2. If a squad community has not been created, create a new squad community.  Use the share feature on the squad community page to copy the Join Community URL to the clipboard.  Send your riding partners the URL via Strava, email, Facebook, Instagram or whichever platform you use to stay connected with each other.
   3. Once your riding partners have joined the squad community, you’ll be able to open recent rides where you rode together an analyze their data together with yours.

Loes Adegeest Wins the 2022 UCI eSports Women’s World Championships

On February 26th, 2022, athletes from around the world competed in the UCI eSports World Championships.  It was the second edition of the event and in the women’s race, former World Champion and professional rider Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (who also just finished 3rd place in this year’s Strade Bianche) was the overwhelming favourite.  This year’s race was two and a half laps of the NYC Knickerbocker circuit with the finish line atop the NYC KOM.  The circuit is relative flat aside from the NYC KOM climb giving the entire race nearly 1000m of elevation gain over the 57km.  It’s a tough finish with a middle 500m section at 10.6% for 400m and then 100m at 15.7%.  The final 500m of the race features a flat 300m followed by 100m climb at 10.8% and a flat 100m to the finish.

Courtesy Zwift Insider

Loes Adegeest is an accomplished speed skater, having started racing as a teenager and races for the Dutch National Team.  Speed skaters make great cyclists and vice versa and Loes is no different.  She had always enjoyed cycling and quickly saw success on the Zwift racing scene.  She joined the Aeonian Zwift cycling team and she has been a consistent and strong performer, racing in the Zwift Racing League’s Premier Division.  She qualified for the UCI World Championship Women’s event in December 2021.

Over the 11 weeks leading into the event, she trained, strategized, focused and prepared herself for the final race on February 26th.  On that day, she raced a perfect race and crossed the line to become the 2022 UCI eSports World Champion.  Many saw this as an upset. But one look at her Xert breakthroughs and training leading up to the race, it wasn’t.  She was destined to win.

The Race

The race was a tough race from the beginning with two hard efforts up the NYC KOM that wittled down the field.  To see the story of the race, we can look at her power and elevation data and as well as her Maximum Power Available (MPA).  MPA is Xert’s unique metric the depicts how much power an athlete has any given moment in a race.  It is the purple line on the chart above and is an indicator of fatigue. The value goes further than just showing fatigue as it also depicts how this fatigue is affecting an athlete’s ability to produce power – their maximum power.  When an athlete’s power reaches their MPA value, it’s a maximal effort and often results in a breakthrough in Xert.

As you can see, Loes’ MPA sees some relatively minor dips during the first two climbs.  Her power data is mostly blue (low intensity) with only short yellow and red efforts during the NYC KOM climbs on each lap. She had conserved energy very effectively, never being pushed or tested at any point in the race.  On the final lap, a few women remained, including defending champion, Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio.  Team USA launched attack after attack with Katheryn Curi making a strong move leading into the final NYC KOM climb.  She was caught passed by “AMP” and three women managed to bridge and hang on: Cecilia Hansen, Zoe Langham and Loes Adegeest.  Loes had been preparing for this moment and knew exactly what to do.  She took a moment on the flat second section before the final pitch to the finish to gather just a bit of needed energy and at the base of the climb she deployed her feather power-up and launched an all-out maximal effort with everything she had for 20s.  The power-up and effort were perfectly timed, something she had practiced over and over with breakthrough after breakthrough efforts in her training.  With her fitness at a level it had never been before, everything had come together at the moment:  the perfect strategy, perfect execution, perfect planning and perfect training.  Loes wins the race.

Examining the Winning Effort

Looking the final winning effort, Loes gets the hallmark power and MPA representation of a win – a breakthrough-on-the-line.   This happens when an athlete reaches and sustains a breakthrough effort as they cross the finish line.  It’s the definition of a perfect ending to a race.

The system evaluated her signature on this day to be 853W, 19.3kJ and 309W for her Peak Power, High Intensity Energy and Threshold Power, respectively.  These three numbers are called a fitness signature in Xert.  Her Threshold Power was 309W and at just 57kg is an impressive 5.4W/kg.  This saw an increase from her previous high of 302W just 5 days earlier.  But it wasn’t just her Threshold Power that made this win happen.  It was her High Intensity Energy too.  It’s as important as Threshold Power, if not more, to achieve this race-winning, all-out effort.

Is it all about FTP?

It was just recently that her High Intensity Energy was as low as 15.3kJ, in fact.  This was at the end of a phase where she had focused on raising her Threshold Power (more on this below).  What if she had continued to focus on her Threshold Power and not on her High Intensity Energy?  What would it have taken to achieve the same result?  To find out, we use the Advanced capabilities of Xert to examine how another athlete’s signature fits the same power data:

Here we have an athlete with a High Intensity Energy of 15kJ.  In order to perform the same effort Loes performed that day, this athlete would need to have a Threshold Power of 327W! (5.7W/kg!)  For female cyclists, this would be reserved for a very, very few at the top of their game.  Had Loes been focused on her Threshold Power, reaching 327W would have been highly improbable, perhaps even impossible.

Others may have examined race details and thought that focusing on sprint power would be a good way to prepare. The final effort is only 20s so could be for sprinters?  What if her Peak Power had risen to 1000W?

Doesn’t seem like it would have helped much at all.  Threshold Power would still need to be in rarified territory (324W).  That final 20s effort isn’t performed in a relatively rested state hence Peak Power doesn’t have a lot of influence on the athlete’s ability to push this power under this much fatigue.  Pure sprinters really don’t have a chance here.

Focus Focus Focus

Loes had intentionally chosen Puncheur (4 minute W/kg Focus Athlete Type) in Xert to help guide her toward the right training in preparation for the event.  She had done the NYC KOM climb many times before and knew that it was a 4 minute effort.  She also knew that it wasn’t a paced as a 4 minute constant power effort.  There was a short flat in the middle where there was some recovery.  Her 1 minute power was also important.  Indeed, the final sprint saw her reach a breakthrough at 500W, far above her 4 minute power.  If we examine the power curve for the race, we get some indication of this.  Rarely do power curves reveal this unfortunately, since efforts paced from fresh to failure do not occur often in racing power data.  However in this case, there are some interesting things to observe:

Preparing to Win

Loes had been using Xert for just over 6 months and decided to use the platform in preparation for the world championships.  Having examined the route, she recognized from the beginning that this was going to be a puncheur’s race.  She set her Athlete Type to Puncheur and Target Event Date to Feb 26th and monitored her training.  Most of her training would be by choosing both indoor Zwift rides and outdoor riding that are in-line with the advice being offered by Xert’s Adaptive Training Advisor.  She also knew that she’s need to be creative. Having been selected in December, it’d didn’t give her much time to perform a thorough Base-Build-Peak Training Program.  She had less than 80 days to prepare and also had to fit in a Training Camp with her team in early February:

She had been doing a lot of Zwift training and racing prior to the start her program and had a well developed High Intensity Energy but had to switch to building some base.  But she also had to be mindful of the intensities needed to win and practicing her race winning efforts throughout her training.  In the 10 weeks of her focused training, starting in mid December and ending on race day, she had 18 breakthroughs – nearly 2 a week – many of them similar in intensity and duration like she’d have to perform on race day.  Even with all those breakthroughs, she held steady on building her Low Intensity Training Load over that period, increasing it from 55 to 76:

This phase saw her doing more lower intensity training than before, including more outdoor longer rides:

In that process she had to let her High Intensity Training Load slide in order to keep the right focus on your Low Intensity Training Load / Threshold Power to get it as high as possible.  She also knew she was going to get a huge dose of High Intensity training during her Training Camp and was going to use that as her Peak phase to get her back on Focus and top up her High Intensity Energy to where it started:

The training camp ended up being a great opportunity to overreach.  She loaded up on both Low Intensity Training Load with some very long rides:

.. but also worked hard to get her High Intensity system ready by practicing race winning efforts for breakthroughs during training camp:

Following the training camp, all that remained was to trust the taper to allow her systems to rebound from the time in deep yellow and red form (this is Xert’s Training Status) and bring it back to blue for the race.  To ensure everything was ready, she tossed a few breakthrough efforts during taper week, mimicking the race event:

Even just a few days before the race to confirm she was ready, she pushed for a breakthrough, seeing her signature reach a level it had never reached before:

Then on race day, she went in with the confidence that she had fully prepared herself, she had practiced the race winning move over and over for breakthroughs and that she knew she had an opportunity to win the race.  And she did.

Xerters are intimately familiar with near breakthroughs or what we often call fakethroughs. In this blog post we’re going to step through the principles of how this aspect of Xert works in helping you discover how your fitness is changing – ride to ride – something that’s never been done before.  Let’s see how Xert does it.

Fitness Breakthroughs – A Review

If this is the first blog post you’re reading from Xert, you’re likely wondering what fitness breakthrough or just breakthrough refers to.  Simply put, a fitness breakthrough is when Xert discovers that your fitness has changed relative to what it is predicting it to be, adjusted by the Signature Decay Method (more on this below):

In the above, elements of the fitness signature have increased and/or decreased.  In determining your fitness at the time of the activity, Xert first predicts what your signature was at the start of the activity.  This is based on the Training Loads for each of your three systems.  Then it will decay each signature variables based on the decay method you have chosen and use these to compare with what was expressed during your ride.

The process of discovering your fitness at the time of the activity is called signature extraction.  It is an algorithm that attempts to fit the signature parameters using the previous signature as starting values and uses a type of gradient descent to establish the new signature variables.  In principle, how your power declines during those moments of maximal effort informs the system on how your signature variables need to be adjusted.

Fitness Signature Decay

A common question we get about Xert is “I’ve been doing all this training and following the Adaptive Training Advisor, why is my Threshold Power declining?”.  In reality, fitness isn’t declining per se.  Xert is applying a decay forcing your signature to be a bit lower than it is predicting it to be.  To understand this concept, we look to what Signature Decay Method means.  Signature decay is applied on each signature value based on the method you choose.  Optimal Decay is the default but other good choices are No Decay or Small Decay.  The amount of decay determines how much your signature variables will be reduced relative to what Xert is predicting them to be.  To give an example (and something you could do with your own Xert account), we can update the Signature Decay Method and see what happens. Under Account Settings / Profile, you can see your Fitness Signature and the Signature Decay Method:

This athlete has Optimal Decay set as their Signature Decay Method.  He/she recently had a breakthrough just a week or so ago.  If we change the Signature Decay Method to No Decay and click the Save Settings button (N.B: DO NOT use the Recalculate Progression button. Simply use the Save Settings button when changing decay method) , we get the following new signature:

If we change to Small Decay, we get the following:

Notice how there isn’t a lot of difference between them.  This is because, the last breakthrough was recent.  However, if we now look at another athlete’s profile where the last breakthrough was 2 months ago, you can see that the choice of Signature Decay Method can have a larger effect on their current fitness signature. Here’s what it looks like with Optimal Decay:

No Decay:

Small Decay:

As you can see, the choice of decay method is very important if you are avoiding breakthroughs and doing lots of training without them. Threshold Power for this athlete ranges from 243W to 255W depending on the choice of methods.

Here’s a summary guide on how the Signature Decay Method will impact your signature relative to your Training Loads:

Why isn’t No Decay the default?

This is a key Xert concept to understand that often gets missed. Decay is needed for two very important reasons:

1. Athletes prefer to prove they have the fitness rather than have the system predict it.  When we asked athletes if they would want the system to predict their fitness without needing breakthroughs, the majority of users did not want to use predictions but would have the system use breakthroughs.
2. Data is error-prone.  If a fitness signature variable is over-estimated due to a data anomaly, without a decay, it may never return to the correct value.  This is important for users to understand because Xert needs to work for everyone’s data and many users do not have clean, error-free data.

Optimal Decay resolves both of these.  The decay in fitness relative to the predicted values allows you to obtain a breakthrough, providing you with the feedback you need to see how your fitness is changing over time based on your efforts.  In addition, it helps you avoid extended periods where a data error may have gone undetected.  However, if you’re data is of good quality and you are wanting to track day-to-day fitness signature changes based on your training, choosing No Decay is preferred.  Small Decay offers a good balance between the two.

The Dreaded Near Breakthrough

We’ve all had them:

• the open circles on our XPMC
• the red numbers on our Breakthrough report
• the black breakthrough tag on the app

Sometimes we get a real breakthrough, for example, with a jump in High Intensity Energy but a big drop in Threshold Power.  Sometimes the opposite.  These are classified as bronze breakthroughs because a signature variable increased but the increase isn’t what we wanted.  These too might be questionable.

Near Breakthroughs are Important

Many users complain about fakethroughs.  They believe that Xert should not reduce signature variables.  The reason why Xert does this is due to the fact that there are many factors that affect your fitness and ability to perform.  If Xert were to ignore fakethroughs but there is a legitmate reason why your fitness has declined, you wouldn’t know if the system ignored them. Most fakethroughs are not material to your training. You may get a small decline in threshold power for example, by a watt or two.  These are just minor adjustments often gaining more precision on your fitness.  Sometimes though, you may get one after another.  When you see this, it may be an indicator of over-training or just a period of over-reaching where your fitness is about to bounce back.  Either way, seeing these near breakthroughs in your data helps you see what’s happening with your fitness.

When is the fakethrough truly “fake” and should be flagged?

Sometimes you might see an adjustment and scratch you head wondering why it happened.  If you’re using the MPA Garmin datafield or the Xert EBC app during a ride and notice MPA dropping very low but you have more left to go and you leave something in the tank (often you might crest a hill or back off after closing a gap), this can be an indicator that the fakethough isn’t a true representation and should be flagged.  Sometimes you come back from your ride where there was a finishing sprint where you let off the gas at the very end and Xert awards you with an increase in threshold power and a big decrease in high intensity energy, again this may not make sense. To determine whether a fakethrough should be flagged, you have to assess how you felt and what you did during the maximal effort period (usually a few seconds or longer where MPA and power align).  If those few seconds had you interrupt the natural process of fatigue by not doing your absolute max effort, the resultant signature might be incorrect and should be flagged.

Many times you’ll see the fakethrough and know you had more to give.  You can flag them if the adjustment is more than just a minor one.  Sometimes, threshold power doesn’t change but you get a big drop in high intensity energy. Don’t let these go unflagged if they too might have been due to some strange behaviour at the time of the max effort.  This can affect future signature changes. Xert has the flagging feature for a reason – flag activities with signatures that may introduce errors.  Doing this helps you get a better signature and track of your progress.

Double-dipping

A double-dip as we call it, is when the system adjusts your fitness from a breakthrough and adjusts it from the training improvement from having done it.  That’s a bit confusing because Xert is applying both adjustments simulataneously. Another way of explaining it is the breakthrough causes an adjustment in your fitness signature but the activity you performed in producing the breakthrough was hard and introduced a lot of strain.  This, on its own even without the breakthrough would have given you an improvement in your signature.  That is, your signature Training Loads would have increased from having done the ride and the new signature calculation shows an increase in values.

Xert tracks both your fitness changes from training and your fitness changes from breakthroughs.  It’s this combination that helps you see your day-to-day changes and improvements you are making.

Xert Helps You Track Every Change In Fitness

Keep in mind one thing: no system has ever attempted to pick up day-to-day changes in your fitness like Xert is doing.  The mere fact that is works at all for anyone is quite an accomplishment.  Sometimes however it might need a nudge here and there from a thoughtful user.  Tracking your fitness with precision isn’t just about Xert’s algorithms.  It’s about you and helping you see what’s happening as you train.  Getting this level of understanding is what makes Xert an essential part of your training.

What is a Fitness Breakthrough (BT)?

Many software training platforms use some method to track your fitness progression throughout the course of a training program or season. Typically, these require some form of test – whether a FTP test, ramp test, or other type of testing. With Xert, we can track improvements in your fitness without the direct use of testing (although you can still do the tests if you like). We use the term breakthrough to indicate a significant change in your fitness signature, which consists of your Threshold Power, High Intensity Energy, and Peak Power. When one fitness signature parameter increases, you’ll be awarded a bronze medal, for two parameters – silver, and when all three parameters increase – you’ll earn a gold breakthrough.

How is a BT detected?

Older training methods looked for signs of increased fitness by simply tracking your best 20 minute power, and taking a set percentage (usually 95%) of that value as your FTP. They presume if your 20 minute power increases, your threshold must also be increasing – likely a pretty safe assumption. But what if you’re not an athlete that focuses on 20 minutes efforts (such as Puncheurs, Roleurs, Sprinters, etc.)? How could tracking 20 min power provide any indication about your ability to generate power over 10 sec, 4 min, or anything other than 20 min? Answer: it can’t! Furthermore, tracking your average power over 20 minutes cannot tell us the whole story about your fitness. Did you go out too soon and blow up early? Did you go too easy at the start and finish with a powerful sprint in the last 30 seconds? These sorts of details can only be discovered by looking at your data second by second.

Instead of tracking your 20 minute average power, Xert looks second by second at your power output and compares it to what you could have done – your Maximal Power Available (MPA). When you perform a maximal effort and reach muscular failure, your power will approach (and hopefully exceed) your MPA. Xert’s signature extraction algorithm uses those moments where Power and MPA interact and identifies a fitness signature that matches your power data. In this way, Xert is able to use your moments of failure to identify your unique fitness signature. Because of the way in which MPA limits your ability to produce power, the longer/closer you’re able to continue riding near MPA, the better insight Xert has into your unique fitness signature. This is important since two athletes with very similar thresholds but different PP/HIE’s might experience fatigue very differently above threshold. If we were only to track their 20 minute power, it might be impossible to differentiate them. However, Xert is sensitive to the way in which they fatigue above threshold and will derive a unique power duration curve for each of those athletes.

When you’re able to exceed what the system thinks you’re able to achieve (i.e. riding above MPA), the system must now re-calculate the ride based on the new fitness signature. The ride is analyzed in such a way that MPA only reaches your power output once. For example, look at the micro-intervals below. Notice that during the ride, this user exceeded MPA several times. However, by definition, power cannot be above MPA. Therefore, when the ride is uploaded to the system, the fitness signature was increased and the activity correctly shows only one point of failure, where power is equal to MPA:

Prior to analyzing the breakthrough, this athlete was able to repeatedly ride above MPA during each 30’ effort. Since you cannot, by definition, ride above MPA, the system needs to increase your TP, HIE, and/or PP in such a way that power never exceeds MPA.

When the ride is uploaded and analyzed, Xert is able to detect changes in your fitness signature parameter(s). Since the new fitness siganture is higher than the old, many data points that were previously displayed as being “over” MPA are now displayed correctly beneath MPA. Note that the change in your fitness signature will also results in changes to the activity’s Focus, XSS, difficulty, etc.

Maximal Effort Time

As stated above, the more time that you spend near MPA during a breakthrough activity, the longer the maximal effort time will be. Activities that only contain a few short seconds at/near MPA will result in short maximal effort times, while activities that contain several minutes of power close to MPA. In general, the longer the maximal effort time is, the better the resulting fitness signature from the activity will be. This concept can help explain why a 20 min test or a ramp tests are not always ideal for extracting your fitness signature, since they generally have relatively low maximal effort times. For example, during a 20 minute test, MPA will only approach your power output in the final few minutes. With respect to ramp tests, there are almost infinite combinations of TP and HIE/PP that can result in failure at one particular part of a ramp test. Thus, it can be difficult for the system to determine exactly which fitness signature is the “correct” one.

Finally, Xert works best when you’re able to fatigue naturally instead of various tests which feature “unnatural” fatigue. We call it unnatural since there are hardly any instances in normal riding where you increase your power output minute by minute until you can’t. The other type of unnatural fatigue is during an 8 min or 20 minute test, where you push yourself until the testing period is over, where most athletes will typically immediately stop pedaling. The abrupt stop does not permit Xert’s extraction algorithm look at the way you fatigue. Instead, Xert is looking to see natural fatigue in your power data, which typically manifests in your power slowly diminishing as MPA decreases and continues to limit your ability to produce power. Thus, with Xert, the last minute or two of the fitness tests – when you’re under the most fatigue – tells more about your fitness than the rest of the test.

Look at the difference in maximal effort time between a ramp test, 20 min test, and an all-out maximal effort during a Ronnestad workout below. Also pay attention to the interaction of power and MPA during each of those efforts:

Ramp Test

Maximal Effort Time: 00:26

FTP Test

Maximal Effort time: 00:31

Ronnestad (30/15’s)

Maximal Effort Time: 06:00

Pro Tip: The XPMC clearly indicates your Breakthrough activities with circles that correlate with the breakthrough – bronze for 1 parameter, silver for 2 parameters, gold for all 3 parameters. Fakethroughs (see below) are displayed as an empty circle. Note that the size of the Breakthrough/Fakethrough circles on your XPMC chart correlate with the maximal effort time of the activity, not the size of the increase in your fitness signature parameters

Types of Breakthroughs

There are several different ways in which a breakthrough can be achieved, since Xert is sensitive to changes in Peak Power, High Intensity Energy, and/or Threshold Power.

• “Pull” down MPA

  • This type of BT is helpful for teasing apart the relationship between HIE and TP, since you are able to accumulate a large amount of time near MPA (high maximal effort time). The effort can either be steady state (at a relatively constant power output) or performed as shorter on/off intervals (20/10’s, 30/15’s, 30/30’s, etc)

• “Push” over MPA

  • These breakthroughs are usually seen as a result of very short, bursty sprints. This type of breakthrough will result mostly in an updated PP/HIE, but can sometimes affect TP as well, depending on how far above & how long you exceed MPA

• Multiple Breakthroughs

  • Sometimes you may exceed MPA several times during the course of an activity (see image below). When this occurs and the ride is uploaded to Xert, the extraction algorithm looks for the point that results in the largest increase in fitness signature. So, although you may have seen yourself riding above MPA several times (and/or for several minutes), the ride will be adjusted after the upload such that MPA will only meet your power output once (see images below for an example:

Notice that the original signature resulted in many intervals of both sets being completed above MPA. However, once the breakthrough is analyzed, MPA only touches this athlete’s power at one point during the ride.

• Near Breakthroughs/Fakethroughs

  • Near breakthroughs are the scourge of all Xerters. Near breakthroughs – more commonly called fakethroughs – are cases where you were able to get your power very close to MPA, but you weren’t quite able to exceed it. In these scenarios, Xert will slightly decrease your fitness signature to make MPA meet your power output. The small changes to your fitness signature aren’t usually too substantial to your daily training, but they will allow you to more easily reset your fitness signature with a breakthrough at a later date.

In the top panel (starting signature), the athlete’s power (358 W) didn’t quite reach MPA (379 W). In this scenario, the system reduces the fitness signature to make MPA meet the athlete’s power at the point of the ‘best effort’. In the second panel (once the fakethrough slightly reduced the fitness signature), the athlete’s power now meets MPA at the point of failure.

• • These near-breakthroughs can sometimes indicate true losses in fitness, but at other times they are indicators that you truly had more to give and you simply stopped early
  • Fakethroughs can be prevalent in racing, where you were may have been very close to reaching MPA, but were trying to avoid cracking and being dropped. Other times, its possible that you ran out of  sufficient resistance to achieve a breakthrough, such as cresting a climb before you reached your MPA. In other scenarios, you may not have been actively watching MPA, and may not have known you were so close to a breakthrough. In these scenarios, you can use the flag feature for the activity.

Pro tip: Flagging a fakethrough or breakthrough tells the extraction algorithm not to update your signature based on that particular activity. This means that your fitness signature will remain unchanged, despite a near maximal (or non-repeatable) effort.

How to perform a Breakthrough?

Now that we’ve covered what a Breakthrough is, you might be wondering “How should I get a breakthrough?” The signature extraction algorithm that is used to determine your unique fitness signature will obviously require some form of maximal effort that brings you to muscular failure. What type of maximal effort you want to do will likely be dependent upon which part of your signature you’re hoping to update. If your peak power is a little low, you may want to attempt a few 10-15 sec maximal effort sprints, aiming to push over MPA & update your peak power. If your threshold is lower than what you might expect, you may want to consider a relatively longer effort, attempting to pull MPA down for a breakthrough.

Since your fitness signature is determined from those moments where MPA and power are close together, its always a good idea to try and maximize your maximal effort time. You can use an FTP test, Ramp test, or some other type of fitness test if you would like. In fact, you will find some Fitness Tests for Breakthroughs in the library that are designed to bring you to the point of failure (and exceed MPA, if possible). For those tests, we recommend performing the workout in SLOPE mode (SLOPE set to ~2%), so that you can push yourself all the way to the limit and guarantee a breakthrough, even if that means extending an interval by a few seconds. However, keep in mind that Xert does not require any form of rigid test – you can add in maximal efforts to your normal high intensity workouts, using our Xert Segment Hunter outdoors, or from all-out efforts during Zwift races or club rides. If you’re riding along with MPA displayed on your Android, iOS, or Garmin, another thing to remember is that you should not treat reaching MPA as the “finish line”. Rather, continue to push as hard as you can once you have reached MPA – this is the time where Xert really gets to learn your fitness.

Frequently Asked Questions

“I got a BT on my Garmin. Why doesn’t it show on Xert?”

• Unfortunately the Garmin and other apps are not performing the same sophisticated calculations that are being performed by the server when you upload your activity.  In addition, the server may remove data errors like spikes and other erroneous data from the data stream.  This may impact the determination of the Fitness Signature obtained through the extraction process and may indeed not show that you had a BT in the end.  Fortunately, the level is precision usually indicates that things are dialed-in for your fitness signature and that the system is precisely tracking your fitness changes.

“Xert gives a different Threshold Power than my 20 minute test. What’s up with that?”

• Remember that the results of all tests are going to be dependent upon the testing protocols themselves. Since Xert doesn’t require any sort of test, it doesn’t need to adapt or adhere to the protocols of the test. Instead of taking a simple 95% of your 20 minute power, Xert is looking at how the effort was performed and using that information – especially when you’re under fatigue – to determine not only your Threshold Power, but also HIE and PP. Further, other systems can’t really account for your total power duration curve from a 20 minute test, whereas Xert can account for your Threshold Power, and your ability to generate power above threshold through the signature parameters of HIE and PP.

“How does Xert know which fitness signature parameter(s) to change?”

• The manner in which MPA was exceeded sheds light into the improvements in your fitness signature. Each fitness signature parameter has a certain influence on certain parts of your power duration curve. For example, exceeding MPA on a sprint will likely cause changes to your HIE/PP, while a sustained 20 min effort that pulls down & exceeds MPA will likely leave Peak Power unchanged, but will result in a significant bump in your Threshold Power. To get an idea for where each fitness signature parameter has the largest influence, look at our blog post on Work Allocation Ratios

“I got a Breakthrough that lowered part of my Signature! What happened?”

• When looking at maximal data, Xert is determining which of your three signature parameters were the source of the breakthrough. It’s possible on occasion that an increase in one or two parameters comes at the expense of another. This is good, since the model is self-correcting and arriving at your “true” fitness signature.

Power meter use and their applications are growing, however. They are now into their third decade as a tool for cyclists and their coaches for the analysis of fitness and performance. Originally geared towards top professionals for use in training, their use has evolved to include nearly all professional and competitive cyclists to help them manage entire seasons of training and preparation for events. In fact, power meters are used by those simply looking to gain better visibility of their fitness and improvements over time.  They have moved from being an esoteric data gathering tool to something everyone can use.  New software tools, such as Xert, are extending the use of power meters by providing a deeper understanding of athletic performance, enabling the optimization of training and presenting real-time feedback and information to athletes during races.

This growth has not gone unnoticed.  There have been numerous new power meters come on to the market, include major brands such as Shimano and Specialized including them in their top end products.  The cost of power meters continues to decline as new entrants look to develop newer, better and cheaper ways to satisfy the growing demand.  Power meters are now seeing increased usage in other activities such as running and rowing for example and there is growing interest in applying the use of power meters in many other sports.

Power Meters in the Pro Peloton

There have been several articles written arguing for banning the use of power meters in professional cycling events.  The use of power meters is felt to eliminate the human element of the sport, where athletes are “riding by the numbers” rather than riding by feel and emotion. Banning power meters is an attempt to bring back the uncertainty of racing where riders would have to rely on their own self-awareness rather than relying on the precision of the power meter data. The idea is that without power meters there would be more errors in judgement, greater variability in how athletes perform, and thus a greater source of entertainment for spectators.

Many argue though that this is a step backwards.  One can make the argument that any innovation in sport that helps an athlete perform either improves results directly or reduces errors during competition.  Whether the innovation is a new tennis racket design, curved hockey stick, increased aerodynamics in a bike frame, etc. innovation in sport is part of sports.  In fact, commercial interest in new innovations is what drives consumer interest in new products, as both competitive and recreational athletes seek to use the most advanced equipment available in their sport.  Arbitrarily eliminating innovations in order to preserve the errors made by athletes as a source of entertainment perhaps oversimplifies the true essence of the sport and in fact constrains consumer interest in the sport in the end.

The Digital Era

The advent of the digital era, with greater instrumentation and data analytics, is creating new opportunities for professional athletes and teams to stay ahead of their competitors. “Big data” has come to sports and is a growing area of interest.  Sports like Formula 1 racing have embraced data analytics to the point where its use not only drives the success of the teams, but the racing organization is also embracing it as part of the consumer-facing experience. Frank Arthofer, Global Head of Digital at Formula 1 racing, sees consumer facing digital products as a key part of the sport. There is recognition that the interest in the sport goes beyond the racing itself; there is also interest in the information that’s generated by the cars or athletes. How this information is used in social media, eSports and during broadcasts is critical to the long term success of the sport.

Indoor Cycling is All About Power Data

With the growing interest in indoor cycling, cycling fans are getting a first hand view of what information professional athletes have been using for years. In fact, the vernacular of power data analysis is becoming ever more familiar to those who are riding indoors simply to stay fit. “Watts / kg” and “FTP” are concepts that even those that have no intention of becoming professional cyclists, or even to compete in cycling events, have become familiar with.

But for indoor cycling, the relationship with power data goes much deeper. Power data is fundamental to indoor cycling. Together with your weight, the power data from a power meter or from a power-enabled trainer is used to propel your avatar and to decide how fast the avatar moves in relation to another avatar. Generate more power and the avatar goes faster. The intent in fact is to make the relationship between power and movement simulate real life as much as possible, and introducing additional elements like drafting and hills to refine it even further, results in an even more accurate sense of riding outdoors.

The simulation has become so realistic that competitions are growing in popularity, with indoor racing events even being broadcast as eSports. Indeed, one could argue that indoor cycling is likely the first eSport to bridge the gap between real-life athletic performance and the appeal of electronic gaming.

For indoor cycling races, power data is the medium by which the competition is conducted. Given the nature of how data is collected, new rules and guidelines have been developed specifically to avoid “data doping”, or the opportunity to cheat by manipulating the data used in competition. A Zwift Anti-Doping Agency now presides over competition in order to ensure those that compete, do so fairly.

Xert and Indoor Racing

Given Xert’s innovation in uses of power data, it is playing a greater role in indoor racing. Whereas on outdoor rides, where it can be difficult to view data in real-time, on a platform like Zwift athletes are positioning Xert metrics to help them manage their efforts and provide them a better sense of their efforts.

Xert’s Maximal Power Available (MPA) provides valuable feedback to help an athlete modulate their effort, saving energy for moments when they can attack or sprint for the win. This data helps them to know how much they have “left in the tank”, reinforcing how they feel and what they can potentially do in the race in terms of tactics and overall strategy. MPA and how it uniquely responds to each individual athlete, is becoming the essence of the race, i.e. that which is actively managed and used to win.

“Power meters are very useful in training but when riders use them in a race it means they know exactly what kind of efforts they need to make – for how long and at this or that level. But if a rider wasn’t sure that he still had enough strength, that would change things.” said Mr. Prudhomme.  Perhaps Mr. Prudhomme is referring to MPA in this statement.  He is suggesting knowing whether you have enough “strength” or “MPA” is the key to performance.  We agree.

But is the essence of the sport about who can better guess what they can do or is it about rewarding those with the greater fitness, greater preparation and better execution in the context of their own unique abilities?  Banning power meters may create a greater spectacle but so would playing golf without knowing the yardage, racing a car without a speedometer or playing basketball without knowing the score.  How this improves the sport is questionable.

Using MPA During Race Broadcasts

The insight provided by MPA is also useful in an eSports race broadcast to improve the viewing experience. MPA becomes the window into the athlete. Avatars don’t have expressions: you can’t see them grimace, wince or gasp for air.  Riding at 500W is fairly easy for most racers .. when the race starts. But 500W becomes more and more difficult as they fatigue and in fact becomes impossible when 500W is more than the maximum power they have available. An athlete that reaches MPA with their power, particularly under great fatigue, is by definition “pushing their limits”.

During a broadcast, the announcer can use MPA to know when an athlete is at their limit, or is approaching it, and they can communicate to this to viewers and listeners. As a spectator, appreciating how deep an athlete is going and how they respond as they reach their limit during a race, is what we appreciate as we watch. It is the true essence of bike racing. Simply watching who’s in front and who’s in the pack is informative.  Knowing who’s recovering and who might be able to attack is exciting.

Spectator Applications in Professional Cycling

Cycling as a spectator sport doesn’t yet draw the same attention as other sports like football (soccer or American), basketball, golf and many others, especially in North America. The Tour de France and Giro d’Italia are highly popular in their respective countries but in general cycling, unlike some other spectator sports, isn’t conducive to live spectating in the same way. Broadcasts don’t have the same moments of excitement. In fact, without an announcer describing what’s happening, most spectators cannot easily understand the dynamics that are at play during a race.

Combining onboard video and data streams directly from the bikes has great promise to bring spectator closer to the peloton by improving the spectating experience. Velon was one of the first to use onboard video and data streams in real-time, during an event. Still in its infancy, they are putting in place ways for spectators to gain a greater appreciation for the sport. Still, there are obstacles to deal with in presenting information in ways that are understandable by fans. Bridging the gap between the data and an interesting broadcast is still needed.

Courtesy Velon Ltd.

Xert can play an important role by giving spectators a window into what’s happening in a race. Just as with indoor racing and eSports, giving broadcasters access to the Xert real-time metrics from each athlete can provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the race. Giving spectators direct access to this information lets them see and appreciate what’s happening to each athlete. Notably though, giving spectators access to the data also gives competing teams access. Power data is generally heavily guarded by professional cycling teams as it provides the team information on the abilities of each rider. In the hands of the competition, it can be used to develop strategies to better compete against another team and key riders.

Opportunities in All Sport

As sporting equipment and individual athletes become more instrumented in the pursuit of competitive advantage, how this data is used in the enjoyment of the sport as well as how it is used to help the spectator experience will continue to evolve.  Power is not just the essence of cycling, but is the essence of a great many sports. From American football to athletics to gymnastics, almost universally the generation of power by an athlete is a fundamental part of the sport.  Training to generate more power is the way to prepare for competition.  Managing the loss of power during competition, is the way to win.  Using power data to help athletes perform better and spectators appreciate their efforts, is way of the future.

Your friends at Xert know how great these achievements make you feel.  To help you get more of them, we decided to put some of our mathematical magic to task and came up with just the right app to satisfy your urges: The Xert Segment Hunter.

The Xert Segment Hunter is the first ever dynamic power pacing app for your Garmin.  The app can be used with Strava segments or on time-trial courses ranging anywhere from 10s or over an hour.  It is based on Xert’s advanced, athlete specific algorithm that uses your unique Fitness Signature and determines the best power you should target, second-by-second from start to finish. Additionally, the algorithm dynamically adjusts power targets to help you optimize your results as you complete the segment. The app is available on Garmin’s Connect IQ App Store and can be used with a variety of wearables and bike computers including the Fenix 5, Fenix 5s, Edge 1030, 1000, 820, 520 as well as the new Edge 520 Plus and the Edge 130.  

The Xert Segment Hunter runs as a Garmin datafield allowing it to be part of every activity you record.  During activity recording, as you approach the start line, the app counts down and then provides power targets using helpful colors, to assist you in performing it with your highest paced power. During execution, the algorithm adjusts power targets using a feedback process, with the goal to get a breakthrough-on-the-line – a new concept in cycling, which means that a maximal effort is perfectly timed to occur as you cross the finish line. 

What You Need

1. A power meter.  Your power meter will tell you how hard you’re working. It must be connected to your Garmin Edge computer.
2. An Xert Premium Trial or Subscription.  Your unique Fitness Signature from your Xert profile is used to calculate your fatigue and real-time power targets. In your Xert account, link your Strava account (under the ‘Sync’ menu)
3. A Strava account.  You will need an account as well as ‘starred’ segments you’d like to have synced with the Segment Hunter app.
4. A compatible Connect IQ Garmin unit.  Click for Compatible Devices.

If you have all of the above, watch this video that shows how to get everything up and running:

Also, checkout our Quick Start Guide.

Important Things to Know about the Xert Segment Hunter

Full Screen View vs. Field View

The app can run in one of two view modes:

• Full Screen View* – This mode shows the Target Power, Colour Band, Current Power, Distance Elapsed Bar, Time Remaining and Distance Remaining.
• Field View – This view mode shows only the Target Power, Colour Band and Distance Elapsed Bar.  It is well-suited to be included on an Activity Display Screen with multiple fields.

* While we have tried to provide full support for all Edge units, the Edge 520, the new Edge 130 and the wearables have restricted functionality due to their limited memory.  They currently do NOT fully-support Full Screen View.  They do however support Field View and can be used together with other activity data on your device.

What is “Breakthrough-on-the-Line”?

Breakthrough-on-the-line is something all coaches and advanced athletes have intuitively understood for many years.  It means that you reach exhaustion as you cross the finish line, ensuring you gave it everything you had and left nothing in the tank.  A breakthrough-on-the-line means you “left it all out on the course” and is a sign that you couldn’t have gone any harder.

When this option is set for your segment, the Segment Hunter will pace you evenly such that you reach a breakthrough just as you cross the finish line.  The ability to time this to occur on the finish line and to make it happen with evenly paced power leading up to it, is what makes the Segment Hunter such an impressive little app.

How should I set Target Time?  What if it’s too short or too long?

The Segment Hunter doesn’t pace you to complete the segment in the set Target Time.  Rather it uses this in order to determine your optimal power pacing.  As you execute the segment, based on how much time is left and how much fatigue you have accumulated, the app adjusts your power target to reflect your highest power for the remaining time.

For example, if you set your Target Time to be time that may not be physically possible for you, this will still be ok since what will happen is that the segment hunter will start you out at a target power that is too high and as you execute, you’ll become more fatigued but with less of the segment completed.  The algorithm detects this and adjusts your Target Power lower to allow you to complete the remainder of the segment.  The app does this this second-by-second, making sure you reach  your limit just as you cross the finish line.  In effect, setting a Target Time that’s too short, will cause your pacing to be positively-split.  This will still work well in pacing you to a great time.

On the other hand, if you set your Target Time to be much longer than what you are capable of, the algorithm will still pace you to get the most out of the segment.  It will starti you off at a lower Target Power but, as time progresses, since you don’t fatigue as much, the app will begin to increase your Target Power such that, in the end, you still reach a breakthrough-on-the-line.  You’ll have a time that is much less than your original Target Time.  In effect, setting a Target Time that’s too long, will cause your pacing to be negatively-split but will still likely get you a great finishing time.

Getting the Target Time precisely right isn’t critical.  This is what makes the Segment Hunter so adaptable and useful.

Pacing on Short Segments

On very short segments, it will be difficult to watch the screen to know your exact power and if you’re on target or not.  Shorter segments will likely take a bit of practice to get the feel for how hard you’ll need to push to hit the power target shown.  Generally speaking, look down at your target during the countdown before the segment starts and try and get a feel for how you can produce that power for the whole segment.  Use 1s or 3s average power in order to get more timely feedback.

Before you hit the beginning of a short segment, it is important to go into it carrying a lot of momentum.  Often this means going pretty hard before you reach the start of the segment, perhaps having some accumulated fatigue even before the segment has started.  The Segment Hunter will recognize this fatigue as you start your segment and adjust the power target for you.  Remember, that some of your available power should be used to make sure you hit the start with sufficient pace.

Using the Segment Hunter for Time Trials

Experienced time-trialists often say that a successfully executed time trial isn’t purely about maintaining a fixed power over the entire course.  The goal is to complete the course as fast as possible and this can mean varying power when it is needed.

The Segment Hunter can help even the most experienced time-trialist recognize just how much power they should be able to hold for the remainder of the race and can use this knowledge to give them feedback, avoiding periods when they failed to push just a bit harder and to recognize if they may have gone a bit too hard over a previous section.  Ultimately, the goal is to complete the course with a breakthrough-on-the-line and the Segment Hunter will help them achieve that.

For inexperienced time-trialists, the Segment Hunter acts like your real-time feedback coach, helping you learn how to pace your power on courses and get a feel for how to modulate your power and manage your fatigue.

How wind and hills will affect your power targets

The Xert Segment Hunter’s 5 colour screen together with it’s dynamic power target algorithm helps you better manage situations where the conditions may dictate that you should go harder/easier in order to get a better time.

For example, if the course/segment is entirely into the wind or up a climb, it will take longer to complete.  If you didn’t increase your Target Time, it will be set to be too short. As described above, this is okay as the algorithm will adjust your power by decreasing it as you execute the course.

Similarly, if the course/segment is entirely downwind, it will take less time to complete.  Your pacing will be increased by the algorithm as you execute this course.

As described in the video, when performing into the wind/climbing, you should aim to have your power higher than the green band (purple) and if you are going downhill/downwind, aiming for blue is more appropriate.  An experienced time-trialist will have a good feel for how they can sustain their momentum over shorter hills and can often even ride in the red band for short durations.  With the Segment Hunter, the time spent in the red means that they will need to take it easier and recover a bit more at some point later on.  Often times, this comes on the subsequent downhill section that follows the previous hill which then brings them back to their original target power.

Doing Segments at the end of a Long Ride

You will find that if you plan on using the Segment Hunter at the end of a long ride or after a hard workout, the pacing may be too hard for you to sustain.   You will have likely accumulated slow-recovery fatigue that will prevent you from doing your absolute best.  The Segment Hunter expects you to be ready to do your best, especially if you are looking for a breakthrough-on-the-line on the segment.  Hunting segments within the first 1 or 2 hours of your ride and when you are fresh, will give you best results.

Read the whole story below…

Periodized & Progressive Training

Training needs to be progressive, steadily building upwards from a solid aerobic foundation to become more and more specialized towards your target event and its specific demands.

With Xert, I set my target event date to April 29 for the 25^th running of the Paris-Ancaster gravel race. XATA then sets up a template of a 45 day “Base” phase, 45 day “Build” phase, and a final 30 day “Peak” phase.

Here is overall fitness progression from January 1 to Paris-Ancaster on April 29th. Yellow dashes = Threshold Power; Black line = Training Load; Purple bars = daily Xert Strain Score; Coloured Circles = Breakthrough Activities.

I started systematic training on the bike again in mid-December, following a 6 week break (3 weeks totally off and 3 weeks cross-training). As you see from the progression chart, my Training Load at the start had dropped down to 50 (2 out of 5 stars), while my starting fitness signature was 1010W/17.5kJ/228W for Peak Power (PP), High-Intensity Energy (HIE) and Threshold Power. Lower Threshold Power (LTP), an indication of sustained endurance power, was 184 W.

Note also the pretty close matching between Training Load and Threshold Power. That is one reason why Training Load is often used as a surrogate of overall fitness.

During the Base phase, XATA focuses on building up aerobic capacity, prescribing a variety of endurance workouts that aim to raise both LTP and TP. By the end of January and Base phase, with every ride done on the trainer due to the harsh Canadian winter, my LTP and TP rose to 199 W and 242 W, respectively, while my Training Load increased to 77 (3 out of 5 stars).

Graph of my Peak Power (green), High Intensity Energy (blue), Threshold Power (red), and Lower Threshold Power (grey) from January 1 to April 29. TP generally changes gradually, whereas PP and HIE can spike up and down more.

Now in Build phase from February to mid-March, XATA began prescribing workouts of some intensity 1-2x/week. In keeping with my desired focus of 6-min power and my fitness level of 3 stars, these intensity workouts were primarily 3-3.5 stars in difficulty, and with the focus of 8-10 min power to build me gradually towards my 6-min power focus. By the end of Build phase, my Training Load had increased to 92, while my LTP moved up to 208 W and my Fitness Signature to 1031W/18.6kJ/254 W.

The ‘smart’ Closer 140 workout that was a staple of my Build phase. It’s ‘smart’ because the wattage constantly changes to keep you fatiguing at a set rate, recognizing that your ability to generate wattage decreases as you fatigue.

Over the final Peak phase, XATA’s prescribed intense workouts were mostly in the direct focus of Rouleur or 6-min power itself. My overall fitness did not really change much over this phase but, as with the whole idea of a Peak phase itself, the plan worked towards sharpening my fitness to match the specific requirements of the racing I would be doing. My final LTP and Fitness Signatures on P2A race day were 208 W and 1046W/18.4kJ/254W, with a Training Load of 97.

This Positive Split Micro workout was a staple of my Peak phase, being right in my target focus of ‘Rouler’ or 6-min power, and also featuring lots of repeated surges just like in racing.

Racing Results

I did three gravel races in April, each one drastically different despite being of similar 60-70 km length.

Paris-Ancaster was a peak physical & mental performance for me. Times are impossible to compare due to the conditions always changing, but my dream target was top 200^th overall in the >2,500 field. This would be a pretty challenging goal, as my previous best-ever placing was 263^rd overall. But I did it, moving all the way up to 177^th!

What other things about training and about using XATA shone through this experiment?

Appropriate Difficulty Levels

One lesson learned is that, the fitter you become, the harder the workouts that you can tolerate and complete. Xert ranks each workout in its database, and each of your activities, according to a Difficulty Score based on the rate at which you accumulate strain. These are ranked 1-5 stars, matching the 1-5 stars fitness ranking you have based on your Training Load.

One of my favourite workouts that fit my desired focus of Breakaway Specialist is “Let the Sparks Fly.” Typically a workout with a maximum difficulty score of just under 100, it’s ranked as a 3.5/5 star workout in terms of difficulty.

Throughout summer of 2017 and during my Peak training phase in March & April 2018, I could easily complete this workout despite its difficulty.

However, early in training after 3+ weeks off the bike and travelling, I tried the workout December 30, 2017, two weeks after restarting training and with a Training Load of 60 (2 star fitness).

As you can see, despite the workout wattages being much easier due to my lower fitness signature, I simply found the workout far too intense even in the very first set, and ended up bailing and just riding easy.

Lesson Learned: Xert does a nice job of only recommending workouts that are appropriate for you in terms of difficulty. If you’re at a 2 star fitness, it’s not going to recommend workouts in the >3.5 difficulty ranking.

Frequent Fitness Testing

The old axiom of “garbage in, garbage out” absolutely applies to proper training planning, either with or without power. When using power, one important keystone is to accurately and frequently set your fitness signature. Without this accurate fitness signature, you will either be doing workouts that are too easy – slowing your fitness development. Probably even worse is doing workouts that are too hard for your current abilities, leading to repeated failed workouts, non-functional overreaching, or injury.

Traditionally, this involves doing 20-min threshold tests every 4 weeks or so. But I’ve always hated these, and I’m actually not really the type of rider who can do a good sustained 20 min effort. I know from past history that I’m much more of a TTT-type, thriving with hard pacelines featuring short & hard efforts with brief recovery bouts.

A strength of Xert is that it makes frequent testing much easier, both indoors and out. Rather than requiring standard, steady-state efforts of different durations, Xert will automatically recalculate your Peak Power (PP), High Intensity Energy (HIE) and Threshold Power whenever you do a ride of sufficient intensity, indoors or outdoors.

So whether you’re doing a hard Zwift race, a fast club ride/race, a set workout on Xert or other training platforms, all you have to do is ride hard once a week or so, and Xert will automatically adjust all future workouts based on your new fitness signature.

For me, I have a favourite Tabata-esque workout that is guaranteed to reset my fitness signature. Each set consists of 13 reps of 30-s all out, with 15-s recovery at about 125 W. I find these easy to do both indoors and out, and it fits with both my preferred style of riding and my main focus on cyclocross racing. During summer 2017, my average watts can hit 270-282 W. In contrast, my average watts during our flat 15 km club TT is only about 250-255 W.

Here is an indoor effort that I did in mid-February. My Fitness Signature prior to the workout was 1003W/17.1kJ/243W. You see how my Maximal Power Available (MPA) with the blue line repeatedly fell below my actual power (red line). This tells Xert that the current fitness signature cannot explain the power profile.

As a result, Xert automatically recalculates to determine a Fitness Signature that fits the power profile, potentially changing 1-3 of the PP, HIE, or TP parameters. In this case, PP remained at 1003W, but HIE rose to 17.3kJ and TP to 245W.

To see what happens without an accurate fitness signature, if I did the exact same workout and power profile with my current fitness signature of 1043W/18.3kJ/253W, that same workout wouldn’t be nearly as intense, nor would it provide the same training stimulus.

Lesson Learned: No matter what system you use, accurate and frequent updating of your fitness parameters is essential to ensure that your workouts are optimized to your abilities. Xert makes this frequent assessment super-simple and automated.

Summary

I hope that you see the power and adaptability of Xert’s Training Advisor. Day to day, it will adapt to your training history and your desired target, recommending training that will put you on that ideal path to a peak performance.

Each spring as the sun stays out a little longer and the looming race season closes in many of us are lured to warmer climes to pile on the miles at a training camp. At Xert we’re no different; we just got back from a great week in beautiful Brevard, North Carolina where we rode long, chased new breakthroughs, and revelled in the freedom of nothing else to do but ride, eat, sleep, and repeat (that’s a picture of the Xert crew and friends in beautiful Brevard, NC above!). Of course, we rode with our Xert data all day and then talked about it all night! The Xert system is pretty smart (we’re biased!) and when used properly we think it’s the perfect tool before, during and after a training camp to help you get the most out of the extra training time. Here’s how:

Before

Taking a week or few days to pile on some miles is a great strategy to find a new level of fitness. Before you head out though there is some work to do to get the most out of it:

1. An ounce of prevention: The big miles can come as a surprise for your body leading to overuse injuries in your knees, hips, back, and even a sore neck from holding up your head during a 6 hour ride. Before camp make sure you’re accumulating enough Training Load so you don’t have to sit out half of your trip nursing an injury. Xert can help you in a couple of ways: a) you can bump up your Improvement Rate (IR) one or two notches so that it’s prescribing more Training Load, or b) if you’ve been in a base phase, for example, and you’d like to increase the strain and difficulty in preparation for some tough efforts you can temporarily move your goal date up so that Xert will select some harder workouts for you (e.g. prescribing workouts from the Build phase (shorter Focus Duration) instead of from the Base phase. Our suggestion would be to do one or the other, not both, and our recommendation is to change your IR, not your goal date.
2. Download the latest version of Xert from Garmin Connect IQ. The Garmin system doesn’t make this easy yet, but with the latest version of the software your Fitness Signature will automatically update over-the-air every day when you turn on your Garmin and climb aboard your bike. Our favourites data fields are:
   • MPA & Power: With MPA (Maximal Power Available) we know how much we have left in the tank as we chase down a teammate up Ceasar’s Head.
   • XSS & XEP: A training camp is all about piling on the training load so we love seeing how much strain we’re putting in throughout the day with XSS. And with some long climbs we like to see how our equivalent power (XEP) compares to our average power.
   • Fats & Carbs: we find this one especially important on the long/slow days. Keeping our fats consumption in the red means we’re working at our highest fat burning rate. Conversely, we had some hard days climbing in the mountains when our carbs glowed red for long periods of time, meaning we were above our threshold!
3. Make sure your Fitness Signature is up to date. Breakthroughs and ‘fakethroughs’ are great ways to set your fitness signature. If your signature isn’t right your XSS, Training Load, Form, and other data points won’t be accurate. For tips on how to do that have a look at our FAQ titled “Is my Fitness Signature wrong”.
4. Be Fresh for your trip.  Reducing to a lower Improvement Rate a week or so before the trip will ensure you’re not too fatigued for the few hard days you’ll encounter on your trip:
   

   Image 1 (this image is a sneak peek at new features available soon in the planner!)

During

Image 2 (this image is a sneak peek at new features available soon in the planner!)

A nice benefit of a training camp is that it’s a great time to get away from structured workouts. It’s a nice break for the brain and a great opportunity to either work on another Focus, or to just ignore it altogether as you’re loading up the strain and ride how you feel. Either way there are a few ways you can get a lot out of Xert during your camp.

1. Adjust your Improvement Rate.  During the training camp, your Xert Adaptive Training Advisor will show large surpluses unless you choose a higher improvement rate. As you can see in the image below, by the second day with an Extreme-2 Improvement Rate we’ve already started our functional overreaching:
   

   Image 3 (this image is a sneak peek at new features available soon in the planner!)

2. Select a rest day. If you’re doing a training camp more than 5 days in length you’ll need a break to get the most of your time. Watch how your Xert Adaptive Training Advisor analyzes your data and how deeply fatigued you’re getting. We took a rest on day 4 of our camp when my Form reached -63 (it poured rain too, which made it easier to make the decision to watch the Amstel Gold race from the couch!) but I did manage to reach 2 stars!
   

   Image 4

3. Look at your Focus from each ride. How do these track with your performance goals and how are you performing at a particular Focus. If one of your training days has focus similar to your Goal, have a look back at it further down the line when you’re in your Peak phase to see how you’ve progressed. Star (marking it as a favourite) this ride so you can find it later.
   

   Image 5

4. Strive for a Fitness Breakthrough. This will update your Fitness Signature which is particularly important if you haven’t had a breakthrough in a while. A ‘fakethrough’ is also beneficial. What is it? Think of a magnet on a fridge – once it gets close, it’ll stick to it. It means you were very close to a breakthrough, and it confirms and reinforces the accuracy of your Fitness Signature. I had a small fakethrough (open circle) on the very last day of our camp. It was a valiant effort given how tired I had become from the overreaching!

After

We’ve had questions from our fellow Xerters about what do after a training camp. Here are some answers to the common questions.

1. Typically you’ll see lots of red stars. Both the Planner and your Training Status on the home page will likely show red Very tired status, and you may even get a warning message suggesting you change your improvement rate (see Image 6)…more on this in #2 below. This is what happens when you spend many days above your typical training volume.
2. Set your Improvement Rate back to a more modest rate.  You shouldn’t use the higher Improvement Rates for too long, especially after a training camp.  You should reduce the rate in order to allow additional time for recovery. How much time depends on your Training Load before camp and the amount of strain you experienced during the camp. In my case, I set my Improvement Rate back down to Slow and took things much easier while Very tired.  By Saturday, after a few easier rides, I was back on track and still holding on to the gains I had during the camp (still at 2 stars as seen in Image 2):
   

   Image 7 (this image is a sneak peek at new features available soon in the planner!)

3. Prepare to require additional training time to maintain your previous Improvement Rate.  Once you’ve recovered you’ll notice that your Advisor says that you’ll need more hours of training to maintain your Improvement Rate than prior to your training camp. This is because you’ve increased your Training Load.  In my case, I reached 2 stars for the first time this year and will now need 7.5 hours of training to continue improving at a Slow improvement rate as opposed to 5.8 hours before the trip (see Image 6 above). If your Training Camp had much higher strain (XSS) than you had previously been doing, you may see larger fluctuations in recommended training compared to before the training camp, even if you reduce your Improvement Rate. This is because the Advisor will keep you building on top of the gains you had. This doesn’t mean that you’ll need to do the same larger XSS rides to keep improving however, but you will see larger swings to encourage you to spend a bit more time reaping the rewards of the camp.
4. Expect a Breakthrough! The whole purpose of training, particularly training camps, is to see fitness improvements. If you weren’t lucky enough to get a breakthrough during the camp, rest assured that with the gains in fitness you obtained followed by the recovery afterwards, you’ll be sure to see new levels of fitness.  For me, it was the week after and it felt great!
   

   Image 8

Finally, we think “Training Camp” deserves a better name…

Whether it was the lack of oxygen climbing up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, or the idle time tuning up bikes in the evening, at our camp we started to talk about a better name for it. The real benefit of a training camp is either a breakthrough, or building you up for a big breakthrough when you get back home and recover from the training load. So we started to call it Breakthrough Camp… In our minds it better represents what we’re out there to do. So we think the world should stop calling it “training camp”, and start calling it “Breakthrough Camp”. What do you think?

Riding with Peter Sagan

Assume for the moment that you and Peter are on a bike ride together in Belgium.  You’ve been training a lot to prepare for the ride.   Also assume for argument’s sake, you are the same height and weight, riding the identical bike.

You’ve been riding together side-by-side from the beginning of this longish ride in the region of Flanders.  Weather is perfect.  Road conditions have been amazing.  Luckily the riding so far has been pretty easy for you.  You’ve had no issue keeping up with him.  The ride has been fantastic and you feel good.

You reach the famous Koppenberg together with Peter, still side by side.

Question: At this point during the ride, who is the stronger rider?
Answer: We don’t know.  Nothing that has happened so far has given any indication.

You decide that you’d like to find out.  As you start the climb, you look down at your bike computer and decide you’re going to hold 500W and see if Peter will stay with you.  You start off and Peter rides right beside you.  You continue to press at 500W and Peter stays with you, wheel-for-wheel.  You’re now half way up the Koppenberg.

Question: At this point during the ride, who is the stronger rider?
Answer: We still don’t know, do we?  Nothing that has happened so far to provide any information that tells us.

You continue to press on at 500W, Peter right beside you.  Then before you reach the top, you blow up.  You try and hold 500W but start seeing your power numbers start to decline.  You keep pushing with all you have but Peter just keeps pedaling, now pulling away at the same pace.

Question: At this point during the ride, who is the stronger rider?

Answer: Simple.  Peter is.  You couldn’t sustain 500W any longer whereas Peter could and just kept going.

Question: At the exact moment you couldn’t hold 500W any longer,  how much power could you produce if you gave it everything you had?  

Answer: Less than 500W.  Couldn’t have been 500W or more otherwise you would have used it and just kept going, right?  This is MPA.

In fact, it was precisely at that moment that your fitness, was finally known.  This exact point-of-failure where you couldn’t sustain 500W defines your fitness.  Everything before that point in time didn’t say anything about what your fitness was as a cyclist.  This is what Xert looks for in your data, even as your power fluctuates up and down, and is what is used to determine your breakthroughs and fitness changes.

Let’s Examine the MPA Data

Here is your MPA Analysis Chart:

As you can see, your MPA remained unchanged during most of the ride, indicating you could produce your Peak Power should you have decided to sprint.  It started to decline just as you entered the Koppenberg and as you started to produce 500W which is above your Threshold Power.  Your MPA started to decline as your body weakened from the high intensity effort.  You were able to sustain the 500W until you could no longer.  At that moment, MPA and power touch on the chart and you had a breakthrough, right at the moment you cracked (1:22:17).  Your fitness signature is indicated below the chart and represents your fitness on this day.  It was a great effort,  but not enough to keep up with Peter.

Peter’s chart tells a different story:

He kept going for almost another minute at 500W (01:23:09).  He didn’t get a breakthrough because he let off, perhaps saving a bit for a final push should he need it.  You can see that because he still had 1037W of MPA at that point.  His fitness signature is better than yours across all three dimensions.

What would it have taken to keep up with Peter?

If we increase your signature parameters and apply these to Peter’s data (we can use the Refresh or Extract feature on his Activity Details/Advanced tab), we can look to determine what your minimum signature would need to be in order for you to maintain pace with Peter, at least until the point he let up.  You can see that you’d need greater fitness signature parameters (note how all three are higher than before) in order to keep up with what Peter performed that day:

What if you had a different signature altogether?

Had you had a different signature, even with a much higher Threshold Power, you would have also been able to keep pace:

Here we apply a completely different signature to Peter’s data.  Using these new signature values, you can see that your MPA starts at a lower value, due to your lower Peak Power, continues to decline and eventually becomes a maximal effort right at the very end of the 500W effort.  You could have kept up with him with this different signature.  Note that this signature has a higher Threshold Power than Peter’s, 436W compared to his 415W.

But if Peter had sensed you near him and had he known you had a stronger Threshold Power, he likely would have acted a bit differently.  Knowing that you could eventually pull away with your higher Threshold Power, Peter may decide to accelerate away, reaching MPA in the process, something you would be unable to respond to:

Even though your Threshold Power is 21W more than his, Peter would still have enough power to drop you on the climb.  Your MPA would have been reached but Peter would have had more available power to accelerate away.

Conclusion

MPA explains how one athlete is different than another in terms of their fitness and is calculated using power data together with their fitness signature.  Your fitness signature describes your ability to produce power at any given point in time, second-by-second, by calculating MPA – your upper limit of performance.  When your power reaches MPA, these moments define your fitness.

When used in real-time using our Garmin app, for example, MPA provides feedback on the power you can generate second-by-second.  It in fact forms the basis for tactics and strategies you should race with.