Hi there,
I’m primarily a gravity racer (mostly enduro) and am new to Trainerroad. One of my biggest weaknesses is longer stages, where eventually I peg out and start riding like a hack. I also struggle/lose time on pretty much all climbs that are thrown into stages. So with that in mind I’m tackling the aerobic base fitness hard this year, however, I am coming off a very serious injury. In December I had a high-speed OTB and broke my wrist, 5 ribs, T4 and T4, along with rupturing/lacerating my adrenal gland and liver. I was given the greenlight about 4 weeks ago to use an actual trainer 2x/wk, and a recumbent trainer as much as I want.
With that in mind I signed-up and promptly did the ramp test, yielding an FTP of 265 W. In November I tested (20 min test) @ 285 W, so a significant decrease but about what I expected after being on the couch on painkillers for 6 weeks. It’s been about 3 weeks and I’m already feeling much fitter. Today I did Bluebell and decided to go all out on my very list minute, I held 408W just to see how it would feel. During my ramp test I failed @ 365W. My question, is should I retest now that I have some rebuild miles/time under my belt for a more representative FTP? VO2 workouts so far have seemed pretty easy, threshold difficult but doable, and sweetspot fairly easy, but difficult at the end, so about where I should be. I realize that 408 W after a rest period is different then doing that after multiple ramps/steps.
I should also note I’m spreading Base Phase II (low volume) out over a longer time period since I’m restricted to doing real work 2x/wk.