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.

If you’ve fallen off the training plan wagon or not sure if you’re making the progress you had hoped to make, you can apply the principles of progressive overload to pick things up from where they are now to move you forward. Xert uses these principles to identify the amount and type of training you need to perform to maintain a consistent progression towards your goals.

Progressive overload is the foundational principle of all training.  In the most simplest terms, in order to get any progress in fitness (or any endeavour for that matter), you must train at a level that is higher than where you are now.  By continuing to add more, either volume, intensity or specificity, you make gains towards your goals. The key to making progressive overload work for you is by knowing where you stand today and by increasing your training towards your goals.  Often the hardest challenges, particularly when you’ve been simply following a training plan or have had some interruptions in your training is to know where you stand today and what training will apply the principles of progressive overload in the right way for you.

Managing your Progress with the Xert Adaptive Training Advisor

The Xert Adaptive Training Advisor (XATA) is a training advice algorithm that uses the principles of progressive overload.  It takes into account a number of factors to determine the appropriate training you should do. XATA uses 3 training goals that guide your training at any point in time:

1. Improvement Rate
2. Athlete Type
3. Target Event Date

These are then combined with 3 essential conditions that are specific to you that are needed to prescribe training you should do.  These form the context for each workout you will do:

1. Your current Training Load and recent training data
2. Your current fitness – Threshold Power, Peak Power, High Intensity Energy, i.e. your Fitness Signature
3. Your current Training Status and Form (Fresh / Tired)

Let’s dive into each of these to understand how they play a role in identifying what training you need to do and how they are used to help you maintain progressive overload.

Training Goals – Improvement Rate

Improvement Rate is the main setting you’ll use within XATA to help deliver progressive overload.  Ranging from Off-Season to Extreme-2, it is used to capture the improvement you are able to make within your available time.  Unlike regular training plans where you may need to commit to so many hours per week for the duration of the plan, actively managing your improvement rate allows you to adjust your training in periods where you may have less time for training or to take advantage of some additional availability you may encounter.

The Improvement Rate is what is used to determine the volume of training you’ll need to perform.  XATA looks at your recent training history to determine if you’re behind or ahead of schedule (Training Deficit/Surplus) so that you know if you are maintaining progressive overload.  Keeping a Training Deficit near 0 means you are maintaining your improvement rate, which means you are making progress towards your goal.  XATA uses your deficits in prescribing suitable training.

Important to note is that your improvement rate doesn’t have to be set in stone from the beginning to the end.  It is something that you’ll set initially but may change over the course of your season to better reflect your goals or needs.  For example, you may have less time during the winter months to train given a busy work schedule but have more time in the spring.  This may mean you set your improvement rate to Moderate-1, say, for February-March but up it to Aggressive-2 during April.  XATA adjusts its recommendations which each change. Experiment with different settings to see the time commitment needed and the expected improvements you’ll have with the setting.

Training Goals – Athlete Type

Your selected Athlete Type is the second main goal used by XATA in setting your training plan.  Your Athlete Type is what XATA uses to periodize (or adjust the type of training) you do in order to reach your goals.  By adjusting your Athlete Type as needed, you can adjust the specificity of your training and have it become more and more specific to your training goal the closer you are to your Target Event Date (see below).

You can actively manage your Athlete Type and change it at any time to accommodate the differing demands of your targeted races.  For example, if early in the season you are planning on longer road races that have a Focus of Climber or GC Specialist but a month or so later, you plan on racing crits for example, set your Athlete Type and Target Event Date to get a more Climber/GC Specialist focus before your longer road races and then switch to Pursuiter or Puncheur to get a more crit-oriented Focus.  Making these changes, you’ll get updated training targets together with recommended workouts you can do that will prepare you for these races. Changing your athlete type can be performed via the “Goals and Settings” menu on the My Fitness page.

Training Goals – Target Event Date

Your Target Event Date (TED) is the third main goal used by XATA in identifying the appropriate training towards you goals.  Your TED marks the end of the 120-day training program used by XATA .. but it shouldn’t mark the end of your training.  Using your TED, your workout recommendations will follow the Base-Build-Peak phases with 45-45-30 day durations, respectively.  The Base Phase has you doing Endurance training.  The Build Phase has you progressively moving your Focus from Endurance to reach your Focus Athlete Type after 45 days.  The Peak Phase has you doing Focus Athlete Type workouts exclusively, with some minor variability.

Use the 120 day program phases to your advantage by actively managing your TED.  Unlike other training plans where all your events are first identified and classified as A-B-C events, for example, XATA does not use (nor require) that you pre-identify these races.  You simply need to adjust your TED and/or Focus Athlete Type to get recommended training to prepare you for these events.  For example, if your A event is June 15th but you have a B event on May 15th that you’d like to also prepare for, you can simply change your TED to May 15th during your preparation.  Adjust your Athlete Type if needed, and use the advice provided to prepare.  On May 16th, set your TED and Athlete Type back to what it was before and keep training towards your A event.

Essential Conditions – Training Load and Recent Training

Your Training Load and recent training data form the basis of how much training you need to do in order to maintain your progressive overload goals (i.e Improvement Rate).  XATA uses your current Training Load, last week’s Training Loads as well as the amount of training you typically do on the given day-of-the-week to establish the amount of training you should perform. Whether you’re just starting out or picking up from a training plan that you weren’t able to follow, XATA puts your training in context to your current training load to make sure you continue to progress.

In addition to being essential in establishing progressive overload, your Training Load is also used to identify how difficult your workouts should be. Workout difficulty and Training Load go hand-in-hand since in order to reach a Training Load level, you will have had to have performed a certain level of training volume and intensity.  XATA uses this principle to help identify workouts that are in-line with what your current Training Load implies you can do.

Essential Conditions – Fitness Signature

All workouts and recommended Focus is based on your Fitness Signature.  By having a up-to-date Fitness Signature, your workouts are tuned to you automatically, beyond just %FTP and based on your ability to do higher intensity efforts as well as your specific ability to recover from higher intensity efforts.  Review our blog on Are your Workouts Too Hard? to see how XATA automatically scales workout intensity for you, ensuring you get workouts that are specific to you.

Essential Conditions – Training Status and Form/Freshness

The third condition, and just as important as the first two, is your Training Status freshness level.  XATA examines this information to identify if you should be able to handle higher intensity, lower intensity or require recovery.  XATA accounts for your current training status in its recommendations ensuring you are most likely to be fresh enough to complete the higher intensity workouts.  XATA also uses your Freshness Feedback to help you instruct XATA about your real feelings of freshness/tiredness so that it can properly prescribe training that meets your specific needs and situation.

Bringing It All Together – Training and Workout Recommendations

XATA bring all six elements, your 3 training goals and your 3 essential conditions to prescribe training that moves you towards your goals within the context of where you are in your training, fitness and freshness.

Should I Plan My Workouts?

Many new Xert users are used to seeing workouts identified in their plan in advance – a typical static training plan. For those users that are most comfortable wanting to know what the plan is for a given date, you can use the Fitness Planner and map out your workouts.  However, planning workouts in advance isn’t entirely needed.  As you can see from all the above information, the training offered by XATA takes a number of things into account in its recommendations to ensure you get focused, progressive overload at the right difficulty within your available time to train, in the context of where you are at any given moment.  This is the plan everyday, whether it is on your calendar or not.  If you decide you want to change your goals, XATA adjusts immediately.  If you go away on a training camp, XATA adjusts to that automatically.  Simply keep actively managing your 3 training goals, keep training, and XATA takes care of the rest.

What If I Don’t Have Time to do the Recommended Workout?

This is a very common question and just like XATA is able to adapt to each situation with each change in condition, so will it adapt to your schedule.  For example, use the Workout Options Filter to choose a workout that is shorter/longer in duration to accommodate your immediate needs. Say for example, you may normally do a 1-hour workout on Thursdays.  XATA will likely recommend an approximately 1 hour workout.  However, you happen to have 2 hours available and want to take advantage of that available time, simply use the workout filter to have XATA choose from, say 1.5 to 3 hour workouts and it will help you find a workout that’s best for you within that workout duration, ranking those within that range higher in the recommended workouts list.

Alternatively, you can use the Load More button at the bottom of the Recommended Workouts list to see more workouts, ranked in order of Xert’s internal scoring based on your 3 goals and 3 conditions, and choose a workout you wish to do.  Simple and will keep you on track with your training goals.

Where to Find It

You can access the Freshness Feedback slider in the Training tab, located underneath the Adaptive Training Advisor and Training Pacer gauge. This feature is essential for athletes using XATA programs to optimize their training based on their current state.

How It Works

The slider operates on a scale from -60 to +60, enabling you to fine-tune your current overall Form.

• Increasing Freshness: For instance, if you set your Freshness Feedback to +10, your Form will increase by 10 points. This adjustment indicates to the system that you are feeling fresher, which in turn raises your Difficulty Score for workout recommendations by 10.
• Decreasing Freshness: Conversely, adjusting your Freshness Feedback to -10 will decrease your Form by 10 points. This communicates that you are less fresh than previously assessed, resulting in a reduction of your Difficulty Score by 10.

When you Should Change Freshness Feedback

Most of the day-to-day recovery demands can be accounted for using the Recovery Demands slider, such as when returning from injury. Most often the Freshness Feedback value should be left at the default value of 0, but you could use Freshness Feedback more for issues that might not be recorded in your activity data, such as poor sleep, nutrition, or hydration.

Important Notes

• XATA Programs: The Freshness Feedback feature is specifically designed for use within XATA programs. It does not apply to the new Xert Forecast AI programs. If you are using XFAI, you should select a workout that feels appropriate for the day and adapt your forecast afterward.
• Daily Recommendations: Freshness Feedback only affects today’s training recommendations. To influence the system’s day-to-day freshness calculations, utilize the Recovery Demands slider.
• WARNING: Setting Freshness Feedback too high and maintaining it for an extended period of time will exacerbate potential overtraining problems. You should only increase this value temporarily and with full understanding of the impact it may have on you and the time you need to recover.

Conclusion

Utilizing the Freshness Feedback slider can significantly enhance your training experience, helping you to fine-tune your workouts based on your personal well-being. Adjusting your feedback regularly can lead to better training outcomes and ensure that you are training effectively.

For more information on optimizing your training with Xert, feel free to explore additional resources on our support page or reach out to our support team!

Focus Type in the Adaptive Training Advisor provides guidance on what the Focus needs to be for the workout at this point in your training program.  It also factors in whether you are Tired or Very Tired.  The guidance is not meant to provide a workout structure but provide some simple guidelines you can apply when just riding and using the apps that show Focus and XSS. Training with Xert doesn’t need to be so precise since we’re capturing all your strain, even with semi-random power data. It is the reason why our workouts are not so repetitious and provide more interest. Following simple and rigid workouts is becoming a thing of the past.

If you’re in the Base, Build or Peak phase of your Training Program, the Athlete Type category will be shown based the Program Phase and your Training Status.  In the above example, it is Endurance and this the general category for the workout/activity that is being suggested.  Focus is shown next. This is shown as a time value and represents the Focus Duration.  In the above example, it shows 24:06.  When using Xert Mobile, or the Focus and Strain Garmin CIQ app or if you have the Remote Player on screen during your workout, you’ll be able to see what this value is for your entire workout.  As your training nears your Target Event Date, the value will come closer and closer to that of your Target Athlete Type.

Note that his value does not represent the duration of the workout or intervals.  It represents that longest duration you would be able to sustain for the Interval Targets shown.  It should be used with our apps or in creating/choosing an Xert workout. 

The last value shown in your Interval Targets.  This value provides a rough estimate of the power target you should be looking to maintain during intervals, if you are planning on just riding and not following a workout.  The more time you spend at this intensity, the more you are training at the correct focus. Combining efforts above and below this intensity is also effective.

If your are Pre Base or Post Event, you’ll be offered a randomized Focus.  This means that the XATA will not periodize your training and will recommend workouts with varying Focus.

When performing unstructured workouts using the Garmin Focus field, you should aim to sustain the Interval Targets or slightly higher in order to reach the Focus Duration specified.  Ideally, the colour of the Garmin Focus field should be blue or green (See Specificity Rating) in order to get the most benefit towards the given Focus.  If the colour is black or yellow, it means that the workout is mostly Endurance / low intensity work.

The Stars

As your training volume increases and decreases throughout the year, you might notice the number of stars in your profile increase or decrease, corresponding with your changes in training. To earn your first star, you must reach a training load of 25, which indicates that, on average, you have accrued 25 XSS/day recently. To earn additional stars, you must achieve Training Loads listed below:

0 Stars – Untrained: Training Load < 25
1 Star – Recreational: 50 > Training Load >= 25
2 Stars – Trained: 75 > Training Load >= 50
3 Stars – Competitive: 110 > Training Load > 75
4 Stars – Elite: 150 > Training Load >= 110
5 Stars – Pro Level: Training Load >= 150

Training Status

The colour of your stars is determined both by your long-term fitness & recent training activity.

• Very Fresh (Green): Low, High, & Peak intensity systems are ready to train. High Intensity training can be completed. Often happens after some additional recovery.
• Fresh (Blue): Low, High, & Peak intensity systems are ready to train. High Intensity training can be completed.
• Tired (Yellow): Low intensity system is ready to go, but High & Peak systems need additional recovery. Endurance activity can be completed, but be sure to avoid high-intensity efforts.
• Very Tired (Red): Low, High, & Peak intensity systems are too tired to train. Consider taking a rest day.

Recovery Demands

User’s can make a system-wide adjustment to their calculated Freshness using the Recovery Demands Slider. For more information, check out the support documentation.

Technical Note: When the Recovery Demands slider is entered, the maximum sustainable ramp rate is limited to less no more than 4. With the slider moved all the way to the right, max sustainable ramp rate is below 2. And with the slider moved all the way left, maximum ramp rate is approximately 7.

Lately you haven’t had the ‘snap’ you had in the spring. Maybe you’re lacking the motivation to ride and it has gotten so bad that you haven’t even cleaned your chain (and people are starting to notice)! Does this sound like you? It may be time for a mid-season break…

If you’ve ever wondered if you need a mid-season break, how to take one, how to regain fitness after one, and how much fitness you’ll lose during a break, don’t despair –  here is everything you need to know!

How to know if you need a mid-season break

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, by July you’ve likely done a lot of riding or racing. You may have had goals in March and then tried to extend that fitness into June, or you simply took advantage of two or three months of warm weather. In training speak, you’ve accumulated a lot of Training Load (TL). Everyone’s ability to handle the volume differs, but even the pros reach a point where they need to take a physical and mental break from the bike. You know it’s probably time to take a break if:

• You feel flat, are experiencing reduced motivation, or are lacking ‘snap’ in your legs. You may even exhibit symptoms of mild depression;
• You have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep;
• You have higher than normal cravings for carbs and simple sugars;
• Your Training Load continues to rise but one or more of your Fitness Signature parameters (PP, HIE, TP) is declining. You may even feel like you’re putting in stronger and stronger efforts in training, but you’re not seeing any Breakthroughs;
• The Xert Adaptive Training Advisor (XATA) indicates that you should feel fresh but you’re not feeling fresh at all! (This is a great time to check your Account Settings / Profile to make sure your Time Constants read 22/12, 22/12, 60/5, not 42/7 across the board – those are outdated.) In fact, if you’re using the XATA you may not even be able to complete the prescribed workouts;
• Your family & friends are starting to complain that “you’re always on your bike”!

When this happens you may need a break…

Yellow and red stars for many days in a row could indicate you’re in need of a break.

What are the benefits of taking a mid-season break?

If you have late-season races like cyclocross, or you’d like to be ready for some long rides at Xert’s Breakthrough Camp in Mallorca, a return to riding and training after a break often results in a higher Fitness Signature. Truth: you don’t lose nearly as much fitness in a week or two as you think you do, especially if you remain active! In most cases, the fitness that takes a long time to gain also takes a long time to lose.

Here are is rough list of the changes you’re likely to see by week*:

1 week of no training: no change in muscle mass, muscle strength, or endurance capacity

2 weeks of no training: up to 7% decrease in VO2 Max but still no change in muscle mass or muscle strength.

3 weeks of no training: ~9% decrease in VO2 Max. Muscle mass and muscle strength begin to decline slightly in some individuals but testosterone and growth hormone levels increase creating an environment conducive to greater gains if you resume training at this time. You may look smaller because of the depletion of glycogen stores in your muscles.

4-8 weeks of no training: Decrease in strength and muscle mass in most individuals. VO2 Max losses by 4 weeks can be quickly reversed by beginners but highly trained athletes could see as much as a 20% reduction in VO2 Max and require more time to gain back. 

The best thing an endurance athlete can do is to avoid breaks lasting longer than 2-3 weeks.

What are the risk of not taking a mid-season break?

Some riders can handle higher TL’s than others – they just recover faster. But this also depends on the ratio of Peak/High/Low stress. A high TL of nearly all low strain work can be easier to recover from than a high TL with > 25% of the strain at Peak or High strain levels. The bottom line is this: it doesn’t matter! What matters is you, and only you. If you’re tired & flat, don’t listen to your friends who say they are riding a lot more than you and feeling fresh! If you need a break but don’t take one, the repercussions can be mild to severe depending on how long you try to ride it out (pun intended!) and your own personal physiology.

This is a great time to talk about the fine line between overreaching and overtraining. Understanding the differences can mean taking a week or two of rest or losing more than a season’s worth of fitness, training and racing.

Overreaching is an accumulation of training and/or non-training stress resulting in a short-term decrease in performance sometimes accompanied by some physiological and psychological stress. Once an athlete is over trained, restoration of performance capacity may take several days to several weeks.

“Overtraining Syndrome” (OTS) as it is referred to in the medical literature, is a serious problem marked most noticeably by a decrease in performance (strength, speed, endurance, or other), increased fatigue, persistent muscle soreness, mood disturbances, and feeling “burnt out” or “stale.“

What to do during your mid-season break

The answer is simple: potentially nothing. It depends on how deep you’ve gone (again, think of overreaching vs overtraining). If the strain and fatigue has been deep, the mid-season break may be a passive week of complete rest. With recreational riders, lower category racers and new age groupers it may only be 3 days of zero activity followed by a couple days of cross training in the gym, followed by ‘free’ rides on the weekend. These free rides are done at low intensities and without any intervals.

‘Free’ rides are our favourite rides…

Ultimately, the relative inactivity is what makes a break so hard, especially for the first few days. If you lack the self-control need to put your feet up, lock up your bike and give the keys to someone else. Or deflate the tires and ‘lend’ your pump to someone who can’t be trusted to give it back promptly!

In your Xert account, set your Improvement Rate (IR) to ‘Off-Season’ to get the Adaptive Training Advisor to let you off the hook.

Besides not riding, you also shouldn’t be doing any other activities that produce a lot of strain. You can keep going to the gym if that’s your routine, but take a week off the leg-related exercises. Use this time to focus on your core strength and flexibility instead. This is a great time to head out for some hikes or walks, and if you must ride your bike, put on your platform pedals and use your bike to roll down to your favourite coffee shop.

NOT good ‘mid-season break’ nutrition. But, oh…do we want it to be!

Speaking of coffee shops, the biggest risk with a rest week is not a loss in fitness, it’s gaining weight. That’s because: a) you’re used to burning A LOT of calories, so you eat them too, and b) you’re bored. So load up on rice cakes, water, and most importantly – have something else to do. Take a vacation, make up time with a significant other, or complete a couple of jobs around the house. Take it easy – be a professional recovery artist.

“One of my favorite things to do with my athletes during a midseason break is to review the goals that were set at the beginning of the season and evaluate their progress. Quite often we find that performance-oriented goals have been met or exceeded. This means that we can work on other training factors in the second half of the season that can further improve the odds of reaching new performance goals or outcome-based goals. I also recommend cyclists who are contemplating making a category upgrade to do this in the second half of a season. This way the athlete can gain some great insights into what will be required in the upcoming off-season to be ready for next year.” says coach Rob Grissom, of Positive Performance Coaching.

Returning to training after your mid-season break

Depending on the demands of your later season priority race(s) it can take 6-8 weeks before seeing appreciable adaptations in power and anaerobic endurance.

First, set your next goal date in Xert. We recommend that you set it far enough out – temporarily – so that the Adaptive Training Advisor places you in the Base phase for at least a couple of weeks.

Second, dial your IR setting back up. But don’t take it all the way up to your previous setting for the first few days or you could be doing 2hr rides on your first day back.

In the first week, use the free ride workout idea for the first several days, then move to pure endurance riding for the rest of the week. For the second week add in some high cadence work in lighter gearing to keep the stress low, then add at least one workout by the second weekend that mimics the demands of racing. Coach Rob calls it the “breaking the legs lose” ride.

You may find you feel terrible on your first rides back. Your butt may hurt, your muscles may not respond, and your knees may even feel ‘twingy’. That will be short-lived; your body hasn’t forgotten how to ride, it’s just gotten out of the habit. You need to ease your way back into training and this starts with easy rides. This is the time to restore your endurance.

After a couple of weeks of endurance work, and of restoring your TL again, change your Target Event Date to the correct date and move into the training recommended by XATA.

Now you’re all set for a strong second half of the season, so enjoy your new-found motivation, form and snap!

Thanks to Coach Rob Grissom from Positive Performance Coaching for contributing to this post!

*Adapted from:
http://naturallyintense.net/blog/exercise/what-happens-when-you-stop-training/#what-happens-when-you-stop-training8211-a-week-by-week-overview, and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3355468/

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?