So many things go into training program and many athletes aren’t sure what questions they should ask when choosing a plan.  Often they just pick something to do, not knowing whether it’ll be good or bad for them.  Maybe the program title sounds like something they want: “FTP Builder” or “Mid-High Volume with a Little Bit of Sweetspot Program”.  But is this the right program for you?

To help you understand what’s important and why, we’re going to highlight the 10 most important questions to get answered when choosing any endurance training program.  We’ll give you an idea of what answers you will get with a typical training plan, what a coach might provide and what Xert does to address them.

This guide will help you better understand the various settings that go into deciding on what fitness will you have on race day (or on the day you’re looking to reach your achievement).  The settings affect how you’ll need to train and what will be needed to achieve the outcome you are looking for.

Main Three Options

 

Target Information Section

This is the main section that determines what fitness you’ll need to reach in order to achieve the outcome of completing the race/ride:

Training Plan Create/Update You can choose whether to update the existing plan you’re on (and associate your historical training) or you can create a new plan and start over again. Date This is the target date for the race or achievement.  The further away the date is, the more likely it will be for you be able to reach the fitness needed. Max Weekly Hours This value will restrict the number of hours will be asked to train over the course of the training plan.  This will be applied when the training plan is generated. Difficulty Score You can aim to limit the amount of Difficulty you will experience in trying to perform this race.  Generally, Difficulty Scores over 150 are rare and will be challenging to complete.  Races that involve and lot of hard, repeated efforts will increase the Difficulty Score.  Increasing this number will require less fitness for you to reach and improve a race’s fitness achievability but be harder to do on race day. Carbs Per Hour You can aim to reduce the estimated carbs per hour you will burn during the race.  This setting is particularly useful for longer events where self pacing to limit the fuelling demands will be needed for success at the race.  Lowering this value, increases the fitness you will need to reach.  Increasing this value, reduces the fitness you will need but will increase the fuelling demands and intensity you’ll need to race at. Event Readiness The default value of 2 is an ideal setting for a general race preparation.  Lower values improve your durability for the race but also will require more training to be prepared.  Higher values reduce the training you’ll need to do leading into the event.  If you are unable to get to achievability for the race, increasing this value will make the fitness more achievable.  However, this will come with greater chance your performance will fade during the race.   See the help page on Event Readiness for more details. Target Weight You can adjust your targeted race weight.  Reducing your weight on race day will lower the power requirements for the race. The greater the hilliness of the race, the more a reduction in weight will affect the outcome.  Reducing your weight beyond what you can reach can make the race more achievable however achieving the target weight may come at a cost of less power than predicted. Similarly, an increase in weight may mean you plan on going to the gym and will expect to be able to produce more power.  This can end up being higher that what the system predicts on race day and may in fact improve your chances of success.  Note: the fitness signature predictions do not account for the likely reductions/increases in fitness signature from changes to your weight.  It only affects the relative power you will need to produce to replicate the efforts.

 

Weekly Availability Section

This section helps you decide on what days you will expect to be training over the course of the plan.   (If you have specific dates that need to be accounted for, use the Planner to make changes to individual days before analyzing and forecasting a race plan).  Note that any changes here are not saved to your profile until the Forecast is saved.  This allows you to try “what-if” scenarios to see what level of commitment will be required to achieve a particular outcome.

 

General Settings Section

 

Periodization Level When generating a plan, Forecast AI will use this setting to wait until you need to do the training before assigning it.  If you like to ride a lot and want to get started early, slide this to the left.  If you’d prefer to just ride easy and do Zone 2 as long as possible, slide this to the right. Polarization Level Polarized Training involves splitting your low and high intensity into a set pattern, typicall 80/20 or 4 low intensity sessions for each 1 high intensity.  Forecast AI can look to lay out a training plan that uses these ratios for you.  The greater the ratio, the greater amount of high/peak intensity XSS you’ll get prescribed which also means more days of endurance/Zone 2 training.  If you respond well to the polarized training method and like minimizing intensity days, keep this at 80/20.  But if you’re often not motivated to go many days without intensity, slide this to the left.  This increases the frequency of high intensity training days you will get prescibed but with lower high/peak XSS training targets.  Note that in order for Forecast AI to fit the training needed into your availabile schedule, the ratio may need to be decreased. For example, if you only have an hour on your high intensity day, you may not be able to accumulate enough high/peak intensity XSS to reach your training needs so you may see greater high intensity training frequency in your schedule. Recovery Demands Xert automatically balances the recovery you need based on the form for each system every day.  This ensures that you have sufficient recovery throughout your plan.  You can fine tune the amount of recovery you will get by using this slider.  Slide it right to add more recovery time or slide it left for more aggressive training.  Sliding it right can reduce the likelihood of getting a forecasted training plan that reaches the outcome you’re looking for.  Review this link for more info. XSSR Preference You can adjust the degree of difficulty for your training by adjusting this slider.  If you’re time limited but are prepared to invest in more challenging workouts to achieve your race targets, slide this to the right.  If you have the time and are the type to go deep on race day but are not motivated to go as deep on training days, slide this left.

 

 

 

“How fit do I need to be?”

That’s easy: “As much as possible!”

While that seems like the obvious answer, the more likely answer will be “It depends.”  How fit you need to be depends on a number of things about you and what you are trying to accomplish:

• Is there an event I’m targeting or am I just trying to get fit?
  • If there’s an event, am I trying to win, do the best I can, support a team mate or just be able to keep up?
  • If I’m just trying to get fit, how fit? By when?
• How fit am I now?
• How fit do I need/want to be?
• Will I need to make commitments and sacrifices and if so, am I ready to make them?
  • How much time do I have to train?
  • How much time do I *need* to train?
  • Do I need to lose weight?
• How will I keep the training demands in balance with my life?
• How will I handle unforeseen changes in my goals or priorities?

Answering these questions, and perhaps many others that affect you specifically need to be considered. Your answers will help guide you towards what you need to do.

Reviewing Your Goals

Xert can be a great tool to help you prepare, whether it’s for a race, a major event or just to set a goal to be your best during a club event. Xert will help you Discover what the real demands of the event or race are, whether you’re trying to win or just be your best. You can use Xert to help you set appropriate and achievable goals and will guide you to Improve towards these goals within the commitments and sacrifices you are prepared to make. During the training process and even in competitions, Xert will give you feedback in real-time about your ability to Perform, helping you evaluate whether you’re on track or need to make changes to your training program. Xert acts as the window into your own progress and achievements you make towards your goals.

This post will help you understand how to use Xert to map out your training, understand what you can achieve and what you’ll need to do to prepare.

Xert’s 5 Step Review Process:

1. Is there an event I’m targeting or am I just trying to get fit?
   • If there’s an event, am I trying to win, do the best I can, support a team mate or just be able to keep up?
   • If I’m just trying to get fit, how fit? By when?
2. How fit am I now?
3. What fitness do I need/want to reach?
4. What commitments and sacrifices do I need to make?
5. What could happen and what can I do to prepare in advance?

Answering these five questions helps answer the most important question:

What’s the training program I’m going to follow?

Your Training Program isn’t a set of workouts you’re going to do set out on a schedule. Plans are rarely followed perfectly and don’t account for unforeseen challenges.  A Training Program is a set of principles you are going to follow such that:

1. You improve at the rate you need to in order to reach your training goal.
2. The improvement aligns with the target you want to achieve.
3. The commitment you need to make is something that has enough flexibility for you to maintain it throughout the program.
4. Unforeseen challenges don’t ruin your opportunity to reach your goals or demotivate you from staying on the training program.
5. You can adapt and adjust the program, whether life opens up more opportunities to improve, you need additional recovery time or there are circumstances that impede your ability to maintain your commitments.

Examining your Target Event / Personal Goals

Whether you’re looking to prepare to win a National Championship or just want to ride in the A division of your local club, you’ll need to identify what that means in terms of fitness and goals. Xert is unique in that it provides you with specific ways you can assess what fitness level you need to achieve to reach your goals. Let’s learn more about this.

Whilst in the past, we often talked about assessing the target Focus for an event using the focus of an example activity, with the new features announced recently, you can go one level deeper. Let’s take a look at an example athlete and a race they are looking to perform better in. Last race, the athlete could not stay with the lead group. They simply did not have the fitness to keep up. To assess what the athlete needs to achieve, we can look deeper into their ride and assess things further. You can do that same with one of your rides/race files that you wish to use as your target, whether it’s for a race or just for a personal goal:

Looking at this race file, we can see that the opening 60 minutes of the race was really tough for this athlete.  The Maximal Power Available (magenta line) started to really be affected at about the 30 minute mark.  For this race, that early move is what separated the lead group with the main pack.  By about 45:00, the athlete was at the limit (when MPA and power touch) and struggled to maintain a position with the lead group and was eventually dropped.  The remainder of the race, was a gruppetto effort, i.e. without much intensity.

Looking at the Focus for the race, it was Rouleur (6 minute power) however that may not actually be what’s needed since the decisive parts of the race did not have several hours of easier riding.  Using the new analysis metrics available when reviewing an activity, let’s click-and-drag the section of the race where all the action was:

What’s most important to note is that this section of the race where the decisive move was made has Focus of Puncheur – 4 minute watts/kg.  This section had some sharp rollers where the puncheurs in the race would put the hammer down making difficult for others to stay with them.

What If?

To get a perspective of what fitness you may need to compete in the race, you can use the ability to test out different fitness signatures and use the Refresh button to see how they would apply to the race data.  Adjusting the signature to PP=1300W, HIE=32kJ, and TP=328W and clicking the Refresh button, we get the following chart:

You can see that with a higher fitness signature, the athlete has a lot more power available (MPA is higher) to withstand the attacks made in the lead group. Indeed, he/she may have enough power available to contribute to the attacks rather than just trying to survive.

The fitness signature we chose was somewhat arbitrary but that’s ok.  What we really want to know is “What’s the demand on Puncheur power, i.e. 4 minute power?”.  The signature expresses this power and that’s what’s most important.  Reviewing the chart under the Power Duration tab using the original signature (PP=1225, HIE=29.2, TP=318) we can inspect the curve to see that 4 minute power was 432W:

After we adjust the signature to the new values:

We see that the athlete needs to increase their 4 minute power to 453W in order to raise MPA sufficently to contend in this race.  If the athlete weighs 80kg at the time, the will need to reach 453/80 or 5.66 W/kg.  After performing this analysis, the athlete decides that a fitness signature that yields a 4 minute W/kg between 5.6 and 5.7 is where they need to be to contend in this race.

Setting up the Training Program

With a target fitness of 5.6-5.7 W/kg as a Puncheur (4 minute W/kg), we can now start to look at setting up the program.  The Target Event Date for this race is August 8th.  Given that we’re now near the end of June, this doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to prepare.  But let’s see what Xert says.  Using the Goals and Settings dialog on the My Fitness page, we can set the Athlete Type to Puncheur and the Target Event Date to August 8th, leaving the current Improvement Rate as Slow:

The Adaptive Training Advisor determines that to hit the Slow Improvement Rate this week, requires 12.5 hours of training and by the Target Event Date, will be 13.2 hours.  However, this won’t enable them to reach the goal of between 5.6 and 5.7 W/kg.  Increasing the Improvement to Moderate-2, we can see that they can reach the lower 5.6 W/kg limit (assuming they maintain their weight):

They will need to train 14.7 hours this week and 17.5 hours at the end of the program in August.  However, they acknowledge that some work obiligations in July could affect the amount of time they can commit for a brief period.  They feel they should add in some more training as contingency for this. Adjusting the Improvement Rate to Aggressive-1:

They can reach their upper end fitness goal of 5.7 W/kg by race day if all goes well with their training.  The time commitment of 15.8 hours this week increasing to 19.8 hours the last week is something they are prepared to commit to.  Looking at the Training Progam slider:

They are already in the Build phase of the program starting with a Focus of Rouleur.  After the first week in July, they’ll be totally focussed on improving their 4 minute power as much as possible, leading up to the Taper Week before the race:

The program is clear in the demands that are needed and the path to 5.7 W/kg is something that athlete believes they can achieve.  With that confidence, the athlete can feel assured that if they commit to following the program and follow the advice of the Adaptive Training Advisor, they can reach their training and fitness goals and be prepared to race the event.  Even if they see interruptions due to work or otherwise, they’ve left enough in their program as a buffer to ensure they will be ready come race day.

Photo: Steve Morris

We were lucky enough to race on the 2018 Canadian National Cyclocross Championships course during a recent club race – and course test – put on by the well organized Peterborough Cycling Club in late September. As expected, we captured all the power data. Here is the analysis you need to make sure you’re ready for this UCI race on November 10-11, 2018.

1. Train to a Breakaway Focus. In addition to needing the ability to accelerate over and over again as is typical in cyclocross, for this course building up the ability to push harder a little longer will serve you well.
2. Build up to be able to handle 120-150 XSS / hour (if you’re racing that long).
   

   Photo: Steve Morris

   This race produced about 100XSS / hr for me (excluding XSS from the run ups). Practice workouts like SMART – Welcome to the Machine, SMART – Runnin’ with the Devil, and Cheung CX – Draining the Swamp, which are all high XSS / hour workouts, to build up the toughness & required to keep hammering until the end of the race.

3. Save something in the tank for the end. It’s a tough course and you’ll pay dearly for not having something in reserve to either win a battle or to hold off a late race charge by someone else on the last lap.
4. Do some steep-hill running.
   

   Photo: Steve Morris

   Not just any running though, practice your dismounts coming into a steep climb, hoisting your bike on your shoulder, and running up steep hills of between 5 seconds (VERY steep) and 30 seconds (moderate incline). Hop off your bike when you still have plenty of moment so that you can hit the ground running, not stopped or stepping back off the bike.

For everyone riding in this year’s National Cyclocross Championships, happy training and good luck! We’ll see you there… #tapetotape

As I lay in the hospital after four hours of facial reconstruction surgery following a crash in the Tour Aotearoa I could only think how inconvenient this was given that in four months I would be starting the biggest bikepacking adventure of my life: 7,390 km from Norway to Spain in the North Cape to Tarifa race.

Selecting Xert

Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve in the form of Xert which had grown to be a key tool for my training since I first used it as a beta tester. Like many, I lead a very busy life and so wanted to maximize the efficiency of my time on the bike. This meant ensuring that I was not going too easy on my hard days, and too hard on my easy days. Xert’s ability to dynamically monitor my performance was a major attraction. Later when it introduced the ‘Adaptive Training Advisor’ it became what I think is the best tool available for anyone who wants to become a better cyclist.

At the risk of offending the Xert team, I will admit that at first I did not trust the system. So I did a lot of parallel analyses with WKO+ and Xert as well as drawing on my experiences. I reviewed the training program from Xert against the ones that I had used for previous races. Sorry. I’m an engineer after all. What came out from this was a belief that Xert would get me where I needed to go in the most effective way possible.

A seductive benefit of Xert – especially when coming back from a major injury – was getting rid of the need to do those nasty FTP tests. The way that Xert looks dynamically at where you are and infers your FTP is a real advantage.  Absolutely no way I was going to do 2 x 20’s or Coggan’s all out testing. I just let Xert tell me where I was and was reassured that I was not detraining too much.

Slight FTP digression. Before my injury I had some ‘fun’ playing with the Xert FTP app. I have a BSX Insight in which you do a ramp test to failure to estimate your FTP. This correlated really well with the Xert FTP estimate from doing several Sufferfest videos… I did 23 videos over a 3 month period and the Xert FTP increased appropriately over time, correlating well at the end with my BSX Insight. So bye bye BSX.

My Training

As soon as I was out of hospital I began planning how to be race fit by 20 June. Since I also had a major concussion, I had to be very careful not to overdo it. Riding outside was risky in case I crashed again as it could seriously compound the concussion. After a two week rest it was on the trainer for the next month, and then some big rides outside. You can see this from my progression chart below with my crash on day 5 of my race in February and the detraining that happened over the rest and recovery period in the spring.

Once I began to train seriously again, I used the Adaptive Training Advisor to propose the daily workouts for me. In all my past races I had a ‘fixed’ training program that I developed based on a number of resources. It worked really well for me, but leading up to the race I had a lot of travel for work, which was going to make it really difficult to follow my usual fixed plan, and I had good and bad days recovering from my concussion, so I wasn’t always up for hard training. Xert’s ability to propose workouts based on what I had been doing was ideal. I’ll also say that the type of workouts intuitively made sense based on my previous experiences, which was reassuring.

As an example of how the adaptive system helped me, I flew to Washington D.C. for a week of meetings and the morning after I arrived I did a ‘beat the jet lag’ century ride. I hadn’t planned on it, but it was an incredible April morning with great weather, so I just kept riding. Xert then adapted the rides over the following days to reflect my indulgence of being away from watching Netflix on the trainer and nice weather. Other days I started riding and my head said “… do something else”. I didn’t worry as much about this as Xert’s future workouts adapted accordingly.  I just wished that the Xert Fitness Planner would automatically update and show the future workouts rather than us having to push that planner button (feature request!).

As I followed the general recommendations from the Adaptive Training Advisor (with an Aggressive rate of progression, which meant about 2 hours a day of training on average) over the next two months , I saw my star count increasing and its colour changing from red to yellow to blue as I moved from very tired to fresh and back again, depending on the training load. I must say that there was good correlation between all of these and how I felt! I also really liked the training pacer as a simple and effective way to tell me whether I was ahead or behind my training plan.

By the time I began my taper for the race—and the 43 hour trip from New Zealand to Norway—I was really happy with where I was fitness wise. Four stars and fresh. That’s what Xert said … was I ready? Most definitely.

The Race

The first five days of the race I averaged 353 km/day, including a great 444 km run into Helsinki to catch the ferry to Estonia. I was still well above the 300 km/day into Poland when, unfortunately, I began to have some of the symptoms of my concussion reappear, so I adapted my race plan and rode shorter days, trying to get a good night’s sleep to recover.

If you like biking and have an adventurous spirit, you should definitely try a bikepacking. The concept behind these races is to get you and your bike to the finish line, with no outside support. So you ride as much as you want every day and when tired, find a place to sleep.  It may be a hotel, a campground, a bus stop, or just next to the road. It depends where you get to! In the race I practiced what we call ‘stealth camping’. In other words, I’d sleep places where I was probably technically not allowed to, in the hopes of being interrupted. My spots were sports fields (these are the best as there is nobody around at night and early morning), campgrounds (in Finland I bivied in the children’s play room), empty fields, etc. The most embarrassing was when I bivied in the entrance room to a sauna at a campground in Finland. It was actually someone’s suite called the ‘sauna’ suite. The police came but were very friendly in asking me to move on and used their GPS to point me to a spot across the road.

One of the greatest challenges—especially for a vegetarian—is getting enough calories to fuel you. Ice creams are great, and I limit myself to a maximum of eight ‘Magnums’ in a day. Any more would be gluttony. Last year in Australia during the Indian Pacific Wheel Race I did a 472 km run from Ceduna to Port Adelaide and my Garmin said I burned 11,000 calories that day. Guilt free eating, when you can get it, is great!

I ended up with an average of just over 250 km/day for the race including one and half rest days, finishing in 10^th place after 29:10:30 (days:hours:minutes). It was great to reach the finish line, but I felt like I wanted to keep riding! I was physically feeling great with no saddle sores, numbness, and I was not spent. Unfortunately, it was time to return to the real world.

The most wonderful aspect of the racing is the camaraderie and shared adventures with other riders. You have this shared adventure and find friendships that last a lifetime. Of course, it isn’t always easy—in this year’s race I described Spain as “heat, headwinds, hills and hunger”, but the sense of achievement, even if you don’t make the finish line, is unbeatable.

Control Point 5 after 7,000 km: the 3,390 m high summit of Pico du Veleta in Spain

Thanks to Armando and the team for helping me to recover from my crash and get race fit for such an adventure. Unfortunately, my wife has said “NO MORE” to these long-distance races so time to do something easier. Back to Ironman. I’ll be using Xert to help with the bike training of course…once you’ve drunk the Cool-Aid of Xert there is no going back.

If you’d like to read more about the event, my race report is at https://triduffer.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/north-cape-tarifa-race/

Chris Bennett is a civil engineer who is a Lead Transport Specialist for the World Bank, leading their transport work in the South Pacific islands. Originally from Toronto, Canada, he escaped Canadian winters 35 years ago for New Zealand. Working in many different countries, he’s known for not having a girl in every port, but a bicycle in every port —at one point 15 were spread between home and seven work countries. His mother had no idea what she was unleashing when she gave him his first bike. Chris and his wife Lis live in Pohara, Golden Bay where the weather is fine and the riding unbeatable. His blog is at www.tri-duffer.com. 

Xploits is a collection of stories by Xerters from around the world, about their goals, achievements, and how Xert helped them get there. 

Xert continues to roll out a wide range of innovations to make it a comprehensive fitness monitoring, tracking, and planning ecosystem. Our latest roll-out is the Training Advisor, an adaptive technology that can guide you day to day with your training leading up to a target date and Focus.

As the Sports Scientist for Baron Biosystems, I will be putting my legs where my words are, and will predominantly use our new Training Advisor over this winter for my training. Let’s go through some of the main parts of the Training Advisor screen to get ourselves familiar with its options and with how to use it.

The upper left of the main page should be familiar to everyone. There are basic data of your age and weight, along with your desired Athlete Type that you can change in your Account settings. In my case, with my focus on cyclocross and early season gravel races, I know from past races that the dominant focus is Breakaway Specialist. There is the familiar coloured stars system. The Training Status of 1-5 stars is based on your Training Load, while the colours (from purple = detraining to red = very tired are based on your Training Status & Form. In my case, my final CX race was at the end of October, and I’ve taken 4 out of the 5 weeks afterwards completely off due to conferences. Therefore, my TL has dropped from 4 stars down to 2 at the start of this off-season.

On the lower left of the main page is where you can set your target event date. In my case, I’ve set it for April 8, 2018 to coincide with the start of a month of gravel racing. The Training Advisor works backwards 120 days from this event date to build a periodized program, consisting of 45 days of Base, 45 days of Build, and 30 days of Peak. As you progress to Build and Peak, the Training Advisor will recommend workouts more targeted towards your selected Athlete Type.

You can choose to base Training Advisor on a targeted buildup of Training Load by adjusting the Improvement Rate, ranging from a weekly XSS Ramp Rate of -2 (Off-season) to +7 (Extreme). In my case, I’m starting with a ramp rate of +3 (Moderate-2).

Note that the estimate weekly training will change depending on what Improvement Rate you have chosen. For example, by choosing a Maintenance (0 ramp rate), training reduces to 5.8 h/wk, while an Extreme-2 (7 ramp rate) would require 10.8 h/wk of training. This can help you adjust training week-to-week based on your own time available. Your projected fitness will also change based on which Improvement Rate you choose.

Based on these values and your current Fitness Signature, the Training Advisor will estimate the weekly training you need to perform, along with the 6 week and target event Threshold Power and Focus values. You will see that my TP/Focus is projected from a current 234/283 W to 248/298W by April 8.

Today’s Advice is the heart and primary summary view of Training Advisor. It tells you what phase (Base, Build, Peak) of training you are in currently, your Improvement Rate, how much XSS you have left to accumulate this week (20 XSS in my case left to do Sunday) to maintain your desired Improvement Rate, your hours of training in the coming week (8 in my case) to maintain this Improvement Rate.

The second paragraph suggests a broad category of workouts for you to consider, both in terms of Focus (Endurance in my case) and Hardness (1 star or easy, 20 XSS).

The bottom right is where the Training Advisor’s adaptive technology really comes into play. Based on a number of important considerations, the  Training Advisor ranks all the workouts in your library to find those that best match what your current training needs are.  When auto-select is enabled, the advisor will randomly choose from the top 4 recommended. The data used in scoring is continuously updated throughout the day, every day, ensuring that when you decide you train, you’ll get the most up-to-date recommendation available.

Hovering on a workout gives you the general power profile, and clicking on a workout selects it. That workout is then automatically uploaded to Xert’s Remote Player, along with the Android and new iOS app. It can also be transferred to your Garmin the usual way via Bluetooth.

The “Load More” button opens up further possible workout options that roughly fit the recommended training suggested by the system.

You are of course free to select any workout from the Xert library, or do any other ride that you desire.  Sometimes, just riding to reduce your XSS deficit at the recommended Focus can be quite effective.

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 idea path to a peak performance!

“We’re excited and proud to have Dr. Cheung join our company.” says Armando Mastracci, President of Baron Biosystems.  “With his deep knowledge of the science behind cycling and other athletic pursuits, he’ll lead our company efforts to build important relationships with the sport science community, exercise physiology researchers, coaching community and academic institutions.  Stephen brings a deep and intimate understanding of the physiology behind exercise and performance that is at the core of our technology.”

Stephen is a Canada Research Chair and Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Brock University and is a world-renowned scientist in the field.  He is the co-author of “Cutting-Edge Cycling” and the editor of “Cycling Science”.

“Baron Biosystems is at the very apex of exercise data analysis with their Xert platform.” says Dr. Stephen Cheung. “Xert is software that is gaining new insights into athletic performance that have never existed before.  I’m thrilled to be part of the team and contribute to growing the company’s profile and applications of this exciting new technology in the scientific, professional and coaching communities and building key relationships with academic institutions.”

Baron Biosystems, a Toronto based software company, is the developer of Xert power data analysis software that offers athletes ground-breaking insight into their fitness and performance.  They are available at https://www.baronbiosys.com/discovery

Contact Information:

Duncan Cameron

duncan@baronbiosys.com

Chaz races Cat 1 for the CycleSport – Specialize Pb Muscle Milk team. Most recently he has raced against the Rally Sport team and even Andrew Talansky.

Bike Set-up

• Specialize Bikes – Rides a variety of sponsor’s bikes
• Garmin 520
• Xert
• Strava

Chaz’ use of Xert

Chaz has used Xert along with the advice of a coach to achieve new bests. Training over the winter he has analyzed his training and developed a great comfort with the Xert fitness signature.

“I have used Xert for over a year and it has been great. It really understands my fitness levels so when it says that I am ready for a hard workout, I know that I am. Or if it says I am fatigued, I don’t have to push as hard as I used to. As a result, my power is increasing and my training is ‘easy’ – I don’t overtrain and get exhausted.”

“When I am racing, I keep the MPA in sight so that I know when I can hammer it and when I have to back off. “ Chaz expects to continue seeing improvements in his training and racing as he maximizes his potential.