I was curious how close I’ve come to ever actually riding for an hour at FTP. The closest I’ve found was an hour at 96% of FTP at the time. Whatya got?
Forgot to mention, mine was done outdoors. Makes sense because I don’t know how/when I’d ever go that hard indoors for an hour or longer. Zwift races don’t last long enough and there are lulls. AdZ isn’t long enough. TR workouts would never make you go that hard for that long.
Be right back, because there’s a thread on this already…
First hit but not necessarily the one I had in mind:
I did 1 hour @ 95% (FTP at the time) last year. My notes say solid hard, but not “pain cave bury myself” hard. My FTP was probably on the upswing then still a couple months post Covid though.
Did 92% at not quite an hour a couple of weeks ago and was surprisingly doable and moderate. I’m in better relative shape than last year having done a lot more volume as well as a lot of SST / TTE extending stuff, so going in fresh and rested, 95-96% would probably again be a solid HARD but doable for me right now (Almost went after that exact workout two weeks ago, but legs weren’t feeling it so backed off.)
Could I do 100%? Probably not, but also not a definite no. If someone bet me and I was willing to bury myself going in fresh, I bet I have 98%+.
Edit: All these have been indoors on the trainer, erg mode.
Don’t have any recent hour efforts so at the moment my current best is 90ish percent but I rode alpe du zwift recently and did 297w for about 48mins (96ish percent)
Looking back at the start of this year I did 3 longer efforts ~ FTP. In order was a test at my best guess of what threshold was after coming off an endurance block, did 52m at 97%.
Part way through the FTP block following that test I did 1:30 at 95% (was supposed to be 3 intervals but skipped the tests because I was feeling good).
After a rest week a vo2 block and another rest week I did 37m at 104% and bumped up the ftp a bit.
1.03 IF (NP) for 60 minutes; average power was 1.00
I suspect this indicates my FTP was set a bit low at this point, but I’m taking it…
115% FTP according to my 25mile PB (56.59 so not quite the full hour) but I’m not quite sure where it came from as my max HR was only 89%. My next best time on that course was 1min 17s slower and only at 93% FTP but averaging 89% Max HR and peaking at 95%max HR 
91% for an hour. But 97% for 55 minutes (Zwift race). And 105% for 42 minutes (mountain climb). So think given the right circumstances I could get very close to FTP for an hour.
It’s got to be an hour to be legit, since I’m trying to see how close anyone has actually ridden to this theoretical amount we are supposed to be able to hold for an hour. The way I found mine was to look at highest ever power for 1 hour on Training Peaks. Then went and checked what my FTP was at that time and found the percentage.
3… 2… 1… until this gets picked apart 
You are going to start an argument here if you’re not careful 
You’re not supposed to be able to hold your FTP for an hour. Short Summary, FTP is a proxy for MLSS (per the guy who invented it), and most people will be able to hold it for a range of something like 40-70 minutes (roughly) but it is not 1 hour power for most people.
You’re welcome
I’ve done 60min at 307W at and FTP of 308W.
There’s always a bit of conflating information though. Does that mean my FTP was actually higher 
. Certainly eFTP from that ride was higher
Yeah, sorry…I def don’t want to deconstruct and debate what FTP means. Just figured that since most people summarize it to be what one can hold for an hour, I was curious how close I had ever come to doing that. And then curious how others fared in that same kinda random endeavor. This is purely for fun and entertainment so look at it as only that.
On road for 1h 1m and 46s I averaged 91% FTP and the best 1h average out of that is also 91%FTP. I’ve no TT’s that are bang on 1h, plenty over it 
. My best indoor power on an interval session was 100.3% FTP.
That is a great way to summarize it. I might add this to bullet 1 because folks seem stuck on finding a ride or segment that is exactly an hour.
The elephant in the room here, of course, is the ‘winner’ almost certainly had an incorrect FTP on the day in question… [lights fuse and withdraws to safe distance ]
Sounds like I’m not the only person who uses Alp du zwift as their test track. I’ve held 100% of FTP all the way up, the time was just under 50 minutes. I was hurting at the end, but not fading. I could have held it for another 10 minutes. Or at least that’s my story… Easy to say after the fact.
Haha, if we all had a dollar for every time we’ve finished a ride or workout and thought “actually … I could have held that longer”
