Do any of you ever do a 1x60’ session at 100% FTP? If so, why?
Not often, maybe once or twice in a season, and not exactly 60 minutes. Because I do really long climbs, from 1-3 hours and sometimes multiple in a single day. And our Wed night group ride is roughly an hour into a headwind, before turning around and coming back.
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I severely doubt I could manage my FTP for an hour on a good day maybe physically but not mentally for certain.
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I don’t have an answer, but this basic idea has been touched on a number of times.
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I severely doubt I could manage my FTP for an hour on a good day maybe physically but not mentally for certain.
I’ve been working up to this for the last 4 weeks, my last workout was a 3x20’ at FTP and I put that as Hard but doable and TR rated it as a 6.5 for threshold. I wanted to work on the 1x60’ at FTP after listening to a few podcasts with Dr. Stephen Seiler where he discussed his thoughts on athlete resilience. But then I saw that the 1x60’ on TR is rated as a 9.7 (which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before) and it made me second guess my plan 
.
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Thanks Chad. Sorry for the multiple posts on the subject, should probably rein myself in instead of posting whatever comes up in my head.
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Maybe you’ve already done it, but I’d start by targeting ~85-90% for longer and longer and longer. Really push that out, say to 2-3 hours, before working at FTP.
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I would like to try it, but I’m not going to do it indoors. And I don’t have any idea where to ride one hour at threshold outdoors where I live…
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Interest is great. But a quick search with a few key terms can often find at least some good starter topics to review. Adding to comments there is often good too, vs new topics but that is subjective and not set in stone. New topics are sure appropriate at times too.
For future reference, here are my tips for searching:
-FAQ: How to Search for TrainerRoad Forum Topics
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AI FTP D keeps on ramping my FTP up and given yesterdays increase I’d only be confident of doing 90% of it for an hour, on a very good day in the aero position, and 83% of it would be a more realistic/repeatable target
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So what? All you are doing is psyching yourself out by looking at Workout Levels. Focus on what you can do. Focus on pushing out sweet spot to 2-3 hours. Then go back and nail a long threshold ride.
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Doing FTP for 1h is very demanding for your body, the fact that you can do it by definition doesn’t really mean you should do it. Once you have reached level 9.7 threshold, your FTP hopefully has grown so much that that 100% is in reality a lot less than 95% even
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Yeah 1 hour indoors is miserable. I’m fortunate to have a mountain about 20 minutes riding from my house which is a good 1.5-2 hour climb for me.
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I do long threshold efforts within a week or two of an FTP test. My threshold hasn’t gone up in the interim. I’m not special. One hour might seem like the holy grail, but once you’ve done them, its a lot easier to go out and do 35-50 minutes knowing you could continue, but realize the shorter version is a good workout. Think about it, the classic threshold workout is 2x20 minutes. So go out and do 1x40 minutes.
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I was wondering about this too. The first couple weeks I was doing 3x10, 4x10, 3x15, and 4x12, I would put the RPE at 7/10 for those efforts. The last couple of weeks I extended the intervals out and my most recent one was 3x20’ which felt like a 6/10. I’m guessing it’s likely my FTP increased in those last couple of weeks.
And based upon that idea:
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Yes. Durability at FTP can be a deciding factor in many instances.
Beyond that, judicious application of such workouts can be some of the best training stimuli. I should add that the first time I tried to ride at my FTP for an hour it was a big failure. Had to swallow some pride & adopt a more patient approach…but was eventually able to accomplish an hour at FTP.
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Yes, they are kind of pointless…unless you are a TT guy. There’s a reason you don’t see these workouts anywhere at the pro level, it’s just a race type of effort.
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or find yourself doing TT like efforts, like the 1.5-2 hour climb that is a 20 minute ride from @TRusername house.
Even then, personally I’d spend more time doing longer and longer efforts at 80-95%. Here is an example long climb:
- overall 7.2% average gradient
- 110 minutes elapsed
- 97 minutes moving, 13 minutes of pictures and stopping for water refill
- broken up into 3 climbs
- 20 minutes at 103% on 8.8% gradient (to the downhill section)
- 26 minutes at 88% on 8.5% gradient (to the water stop)
- 39 minutes at 88% on 8% gradient
I didn’t bother doing 1x60 at ftp to prepare. Instead I did longer and longer tempo/SS efforts and those included some shorter over threshold efforts.
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Yes, key word is judicious.
Something as simple as 3x8-min “threshold” can generate a lot of stimulus. A week ago I did one of those workouts, with a bonus 2+ minute effort near end, and my WKO relative vo2max estimates were 25+ minutes at 85% vo2max and 21 minutes at 90%.
Here is a 32-minute field test from January:
I generated more (about 4x) stimulus at 90% vo2max (relative, estimated) by doing the 3x8-min “threshold” effort than doing the longer 32-min field test.
Of course that assumes WKO has enough data to do a decent estimate. Perception wise I was doing more heavy breathing on the 3x8-min than on the 32-min effort.
FWIW.
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