I am starting my second season of structured training with TR, going back again to Sweet Spot Base LV which starts with Mount Field.
Last year my off the couch FTP was 259W and my adaptations to structured training were faster than the FTP tests distributed through the Base phase. In other words I found the workout both relatively easy and productive.
I am now at 314W (thanks, TR!) but yesterday Mount Field felt like surgery without anesthesia. And it feels Antelope and Eclipse are going to kill me.
Who has been in this position? Do you ever find joy in the workouts without chronic reductions in intensity? Can I expect the adaptations to continue to make Base feel a bit more tolerable?
How was your fueling? These workouts I’ve found require a lot more cognizance of nutrition than the high intensity stuff. You just burn more energy holding these higher watts for longer intervals, and if you’re not eating enough leading into the workout, it can feel like hell.
Last time that started happening to me I was overtrained and dehydrated. Ended up in the ER b/c I was so much pain. Has there been nothing new in your regimen other than completing plan, test, on to next plan? Also consider looking in to current sleep pattern. Lastly, as mentioned above, I’d imagine (not there yet) the further you get in power requirements and closer to the bleeding edge of your system, the more your nutrition will play a vital role.
How much did your ftp change between the last assessment and the current one? How are you measuring power? What do your last several weeks of training/riding look like? How was nutrition/sleep going in to that workout?
What Build and Specialty plans did you do? Is it possible that you’ve really tuned up your top-end vo2 to anaerobic power? I think that this can help produce a higher number in the TR ramp test, even if you couldn’t sustain that power for an hour.
You could try Lamarck as a baseline (4x10min @100% with 2min rests). Ride it and adjust down if you need to. Then take your average power of the 4 intervals and use that as your SSB FTP.
You might be on to something. I’ve been eating enough - but not sure whether I’ve been eating the right stuff. I think I need to dig into the nutrition side of things. I do pop the odd GU Roctane get on the bike to give me a kick, but that’s probably not the same as topping up the glycogen stores in advance.
Very possible. I did Short Power Build and never made it to Specialty Phase as the outdoor season started. But to help maintain fitness during the outdoor season I focused on VO2max workouts…so ignored SS altogether. Thanks for pointing that out.
No… but I hope the guys would acknowledge that the ramp test FTP is a bit of a blunt tool. They’ve tested it thoroughly to get it at a level that’s going to work for most people, but there will be some outliers. And I honestly don’t believe that a single test can guarantee to give you the exact right numbers both for 10+ minute SS/threshold intervals, and 30-60 second anaerobic / vo2 bursts.
They already acknowledged (in the podcast that debuted the Ramp Test) that it is not perfect for everyone. They admitted from the outset that there are and will continue to be outliers. Nothing new to claim or acknowledge.
As with ANY test, they will work for some people better than others. That is the reason they maintain the 1x20 and 2x8 tests in the catalog, so people can substitute and use them as they see fit.
The Ramp is the default for them because it is good for a large number of people and easier to perform in some ways, when compared to the other tests.
TR makes no “guarantee” like that, because it’s simply not possible. There are too many variables to have a single test capture all of that.
That fact is part of the reason they spend time educating about the need to review test in the first place, as well as consider and apply workout intensity adjustments for some workouts (like VO2max and Anaerobic) to suit the particular feel of each rider.
Agreed… my post wasn’t intended in any way as a dig at the TR guys or product. But if you’re a fairly casual user who doesn’t listen to podcasts or spend a lot of time on the forum or reading geeky stuff about training zones, it’s easy to expect the ramp test to work perfectly for every rider in every situation.
I wish more people were capable of manually adjusting their FTP or the workout intensity based on their varying fitness and capabilities - but absent that level of self-knowledge the tests make sense as a proxy.
Frankly - if you die once on a workout that’s fine, try whatever is next for you. But if you are dying on every workout just lower the FTP setting. You don’t need to retest, you have it set too high for you to complete that workout
I’d go a bit further - if you’re failing or feeling particularly stressed and burnt out on workouts with an IF as low as Mount Field you probably need to lower the setting until you get back ahead of the curve
