The result of the survey is following the normal distribution which is what errors of most models SHOULD look like as the errors are normally distributed.
Correct. Mostly because people don’t do extensive FTP blocks. If they do, they learn what riding at Threshold feels like and how to get comfortable (relatively) with riding at it (or likely 5 or 10 watts below it) for longer and longer periods.
A few weeks back I did a 4 week extensive FTP block and pushed my TTE out from 35 minutes to over 55 minutes.
Of course, there’s no reason one has to do such training, unless a) it’s event-specific or b) you’re just curious.
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This!
The last sentence is particularly important: training TTE is not a justification in and of itself. You could be using that time and effort to improve other aspects of your fitness. But for plenty of types of riding, extending your TTE can be useful. For others, not so much.
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By max effort, i mean an all out effort of any length. intervals.icu uses your best performances over ~5ish minutes (you can adjust that value) to estimate your FTP.
As far as what training to do, I’ve come to believe that doing whatever keeps you motivated/consistent is usually best. For some people that’s the 80/20 method like it sounds like you’re doing, others prefer prymidal type training. Both are valid, esp. if you’re just happy to have simple goals and don’t need to be as fast as possible no exceptions.
One other comment I would add is that riding in an aero position often reduces that power you can sustain, it’s usually worth it if your goal is max speed, but just something to consider.
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Thanks, I may be mistaken, but Dr. Coggan’s original FTP was used as a stand in for MLSS/LT, with the key being ‘Functional’ threshold power, and was a field test to estimate MLSS/LT if you couldn’t do it in a lab and was defined as 1hr max power (later to be estimated using at 20min test).
If I’m thinking of the correct study you’re referencing, people who weren’t able to hold their 1hr power based on the 20min *0.95 test. Meaning that test protocol is flawed for some people. By definition, everyone can hold their 1hr power for 1hr, and it would only be off if you estimate your 1hr power from some other test.
I think the differences come from blending the many definitions of FTP and when we get this far into the minutia is when the differences show up (and to me they don’t really matter that much for training, it’s just fun to discuss on the internet).
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So I was doing elite level training in 2016-2017, my first 18 months of road cycling?
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Pushed it out to 55-65 minutes depending on how you interpret my power curve at the time.
Because I know how to do all-out experiments on myself?!
I’m in complete agreement with everything you wrote. 
In my mind, I said exactly that, only that I tried to avoid jargon that @wsun may not be familiar with.
… except when it matters. The FTP = hour power misunderstanding causes a lot of confusion, which is of immediate relevance since FTP is used to anchor all power zones. People might think that they “overtest” (especially when it comes to the ramp test that is used on TR and many other platforms), because they cannot hold that power number for anywhere close to one hour. Dispelling that myth is important, me thinks.
Many people who are new to sport are just unfamiliar with the feeling of pushing yourself hard. A good example is Youtuber’s Mark Lewis’ wife: the first time she did a gas exchange test to determine her lactate threshold and her VO2max. When she gave up she never even got close to her lactate threshold, let alone her VO2max.
Newer research suggests the opposite: not even the majority of professional cyclists were able to hold their FTP for one hour. I think this is just an artefact of Coggan coming up with the sensible idea of using a 40k TT as a proxy for a lactate threshold test. These were early days and his cohort was quite select. We simply know better now.
I don’t think that makes the test protocol flawed, the 20-minute FTP test is one of the two most popular (and arguably the oldest) FTP test protocol.
Any FTP test rests on the fact that the power number you get from the test protocol strongly correlates with power at LT2 in a precise fashion. There are always variations due to a cyclist’s abilities and physiology, a cyclist’s familiarity with a test protocol, etc. that cause variations from the average. But I don’t think this invalidates the study.
I still think it is significant that only a minority of professional cyclists were not able to hold their FTP for one hour, because it points to a larger truth: TTE at FTP is trainable and there is a lot of variation. (I have a conjecture why pros on average are able to hold their FTP for 50 minutes: that’s roughly the duration of a 40k TT and most of them don’t need to hold their FTP for longer. Instead of extending their TTE at FTP for longer, they invest the training into other aspects of their fitness. Again, this is just my conjecture.)
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I think it really helps to think of FTP, Critical Power, and heavy/severe domain border as essentially the same thing. All 3 represent moving from stable to unstable physiology. The ‘upper threshold’ is the dividing line between:
- stable oxygen consumption vs continuously increases in breathing & oxygen consumption until you hit max (vo2max)
- stable heart rate vs increasing to HRmax
- stable blood lactate generation vs increasing blood lactate
Those are slow increases if you are just above the dividing line. If you push a lot higher power, then those are a lot quicker increases. If you push enough power, you can blow thru your anaerobic capacity and be forced to tap out possibly before those reach max values (think of a 30-sec or 1-min all-out effort).
How long you can hold ftp is a separate question. How long you can hold ftp can be trained. With more and more training, you can push it out longer and longer. The CP crowd says you can sustain it for around 20-40 minutes. The FTP crowd says you can sustain it for around 30-70 minutes.
This is within reach of an amateur cyclist with average genetics, I’m living proof. It only requires motivation, lots and lots of motivation, and lots and lots of training, to ride around threshold power and do it for 40-50+ minutes.
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Thanks OrioCookie for the very interesting information. I am a bit surprised about what you wrote for holding FTP for 1 hour as I had always thought that was sort of the “confirmation” for the ramp or 20 minute tests.
I started road cycling seriously in end of 2019. In 2021, I tried to match 1 HR power to TR Ramp FTP 237. I was able to get NP @ 233 w.
Then in 2022 my TR FTP was 235 when I did my 1 hour but it was for max avg speed. We have a nice flat 2.4 km stretch of road closed to thru traffic so a good place to try it. I forgot if the TR FTP was Ramp or AI…
And last week, my TR AI FTP was 224 when I tried for my 1 hour of max avg speed. Yes, I think if I didn’t aero tuck and just went for power, I am pretty sure I would be at least 224 w.
I use FTP just for personal reference and my goal is to hope to achieve 3.5w/kg. But at nearly 60, I don’t have high hopes but I’m definitely giving it a go. In 2021, I hit 3,4 (237w) but after that, Covid trounced my VO2 & FTP. The last 2 seasons were more for rebuild than anything else.
As for Lactate Threshold… I have not much clue and pretty much just ride Z2 to varying levels of RPE and ride VO2 to power.
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All field testing. Here is an example from when I did 3 all-out efforts within 3 weeks.
In order:
- 20-min at 288W * .95 = estimated ftp 274W
15 days later:
- 8-min at 303W *.9 = estimated ftp 273W
4 days later:
- steady-state 53-min at 272W (276W normalized), and from the power curve 66-min at 271W
All three were well paced, all-out efforts. In general the 95% rule for 20-min and 40-60 minute efforts holds true for myself.
Another example from 3 years ago:
- 20-min at 254W * .95 = estimated ftp 242W
9 days later:
- 52 minutes at 243W (244W normalized)
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If you managed to hit 3.4 W/kg recently, 3.5 W/kg is definitely within reach.
I would like to re-emphasize something that @Helvellyn wrote earlier, and something @WindWarrior explained nice later in this thread: you can train your TTE. However, you may not need to. Assuming you don’t do time trials or hill climb TTs, extending your TTE might be useful when you are frequently dealing with long, sustained climbs of 30+ minutes. Otherwise it might be useful to improve other facets of your fitness instead. E. g. you could increase your FTP and a wattage that was 95 % FTP might now be only 90 % FTP. (I’m just using simple numbers for illustration purposes.) Or if you e. g. do mountain biking, training Z5+ could be a better investment since you might have to deal with lots of power spikes when doing a technical climb.
Of course, if you enjoy the training that goes into extending your TTE, then this is a perfectly valid reason, too. Stuff like that is very good mental training. If you want motivation/a cautionary tale, have a look at TR’s video “The Chase”, which follows the training of Justin Rossi who podiumed in national TTs. His description of the hurt locker is amazing, and shows what it takes to “simply” spend 50ish minutes at roughly FTP. 
My favorite type of road race is a hill climb TT, which is quite similar. So I understand the addiction to being in the hurt locker.
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I think the only thing that study showed was that more elite cyclists could hold 95% of their 20 minute power for longer.
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Also, how are FTP and TTE both a thing? Doesn’t make sense. If you can only hold your “FTP” for 30 minutes, it ain’t your FTP.
Hi OreoCookie,
Wow, this is very informative, thank you. This LT & Zone thing… ugh… confusing.
I am 59 years old and my ultimate goal is to live long, die fast and not to be medicated in order to take my next breath. Last summer I hit 3.4 w/kg and now only 3.24 w/kg. That 0.26 w/kg seems so far away. I cut back my road riding hours because I also do a lot of MTB & functional strength training. After a major ass kicking by Covid in Nov 2021 and then 3x illnesses this winter (I used to never get sick)… I totally lost my top end short duration power and my RHR jumped from 50 to 60 and MHR dropped from 180 to 160. But I have now sort of built back my endurance, RHR dropping back to the low 50’s and MHR increasing to mid 170’s.
But your mentioning of MTB is really relevant because last year I started eMTB. Why not right? I rather get taken out by a tree in the woods than a bad driver on the road. I live in a city where drivers hate bikers. Even though it is electric assisted, I still ride to power so that means nearly no Turbo mode and I still try to get a lot of elevation riding at >FTP. So, each week I also will do a 1 hr session where I do a lot of short duration 250w ~ 350w to exhaustion.
I don’t race or even group ride, but I do like to train hard. Yes, I like the mental and physical challenge. I guess I’m addicted to endorphin. When Roglič did that last TT in the TdF with crooked helmet, nose dripping… people laughed but I thought, man, though he lost, that guy left it all out there and took nothing home, how great is that? Anyways, thanks for the links, I will look and learn, I like to train efficiently.
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Yes, FTP again… but I really thought most should be able to ride 1 hr at FTP, until now…
Considering many compare FTP with things like 300W club… I would think there should be some kind of a standard such as… hour power, otherwise comparison is kind of irrelevant. Or maybe more accurately, w/kg per hr?
Simply put, we want to identify the power just where your legs start to get sour really quickly. This power level is the baseline with respect to which you train.
All of this makes sense. For every week off the bike, you need twice the time to make up the difference. So don’t worry about becoming fit again, you will. It’ll just take time. And it seems that all signs point to you gaining fitness again. Enjoy the process of getting there!
I also like that you do some gym work. This is really a sore spot, and I can tell that I’d benefit from that greatly. 
I’m a big fan of ebikes. Especially eMTBs make a lot of routes accessible to people, and riding becomes more fun. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
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No, they used Coggan’s 20-minute test to determine the power the athletes had to ride at, i. e. they subtracted the usual 5 %. Have a look at the study and the discussion in the corresponding forum thread. As you can see from Figure 1 in the article, only a minority of athletes is able to hold the FTP (determined by the 20-minute test) for longer than 60 minutes. (The boxes correspond to +/- 25 % of the athletes above/below the average.)