No idea, how that’s calculated actually.
The data should be accurate tho, my bike has powermeter. Tho there’s lots of costing thro those 6h40m, and I did go all out. I walked a few of the last climbs because I pace way to hard in the beginning and wanted to puke most of the race.
I usually don’t like the dykes I always find them too windy and sometimes I don’t feel comfortable doing sprints around cars. Might try it again tho, thanks for the tip.
My new plan is to do loops around Máximapark. Might try the Rijnkanaal but on the Lek side the road is not very good.
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Can you post the time in zones from that April 15th race?
IF = intensity factor = Normalized Power/FTP. So 0.94 for an hour would be a really hard effort, almost all TR workouts used in the training plans are lower IF than 0.94 (except for very high workout levels/short duration workouts).
Its possible you have a difference in what power you can do inside vs outside if the indoor workouts feel very hard vs that outdoor race indicating you can do more, but thats jumping to conclusions.
Yeah. There you go.
I honestly I’m starting to feel like the problem was not doing an FTP test right after the event, because this last training block was entirely under the Optimal zone (green) on intervals.icu
I agree with @RCC above. You need to do a proper FTP test, not rely on AIFTP, at least not yet. I’d bet your FTP is over 200 already.
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Don’t put too much into those zones, CTL, etc… intervals is an amazing tool - but there are many flaws basing training/FTP off those metrics. You need to feed accurate data in or else it’s garbage in:garbage out
Do a long form FTP test or whatever FTP test you want and go from there
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@tuxedotrainer - I’ll give you another approach that’s worked well for me using TR. Simple, but you might not like it 
Sweet Spot Base Low Volume and Sustained Power Build Low Volume. Basically for me, I had a Gran Fondo / Century Event on the calendar and used plan builder. Get a trainer, use it for all of your interval workouts without question. That’s 3 a week from 60-90 minutes on the trainer, not outside.
Do those workouts as prescribed without question (much easier on the trainer than outside). If you feel like crap one day, you can take a rest day and move the workout to the next. I’d re-shuffle a little using plan builder to do two back to back workouts during the week, and then a rest day before a longer / harder outside ride Saturday, and then a rest day Sunday. But do the workouts inside and on the trainer. Erg mode is fine for everything at this stage.
Rate workout completion accurately every time with post-workout surveys. No gaming the system.
Add in weekend / extra outdoor rides as fatigue and time allows, but you have to be mindful if they’re impacting the interval workouts.
Compliance and consistency, that’s it. When I started working with a coach, my AIFTP was actually very close to the value we came out with after doing a full battery of tests, and I’d seen steady progress. I am convinced that was because I’d shown a real high and boring degree of consistency and compliance.
Lots of other good advice here if you don’t like mine, but another option I didn’t see suggested is pay a coach for a couple months. Work with someone to set up a plan for you, work with you, critique your approach, and tell you where you’re falling short. You’ll learn what you’re doing well and not which will help you in the long run.
I think a lot of it was the nature of the workouts you had done as well. A lot of long sustained interval work that was “near” maximal. Those are always going to be more relevant for AIFTP and mFTP models than a bunch of short SST or HIIT. For the most part people who do tons of HIIT end up with inflated FTP whether from a ramp test or AIFTP in my experience with it.
That’s also why we went straight into VO2max for you where as most others I usually have do more foundational work first.
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Yep over 2 hours for the threshold and higher zones. You can manual adjust the FTP on that race to see what the time in zones is for a higher FTP. Or just pick a more reasonable IF like 0.8 gives FTP 210.
I agree with your assessment that the training after that event could be too easy relative to your fitness, does seem like a plausible explanation.
I have now tested and indeed my FTP was slightly higher than the AI FTP detection. However it was a 2.5% difference, from 184W to 189W.
To compile all the answers on this thread. And what where my takeaways, and what I will be doing in the upcoming weeks to see if I see an improvement.
What went wrong
- Not enough stimulus over this weeks, probably caused by the following;
- FTP was not updated right after a big event. This should have ensured that the workouts that I was doing after were hard enough to keep building on the fitness of the event;
- The consistent wasn’t enough during, for example having vacations, then got sick, and having a scheduled recovery week after vacation;
- Maybe not the best training quality, since lots of workouts where outside, the quality might not have been the best.
What’s next
Obviously I still don’t know if this is going to fix everything but this is what I’m trying
- I’m now on LVSS Base 1;
- Did a Ramp FTP test 189W, hopefully this increases the stimulus for all the following workouts;
- Going to do more inside workouts, at least one per week (probably the threshold), and for outside workouts going to keep looking for places where it’s easy to maintain power;
- Some weeks I will supplement with some Z2 riding just to increase a bit of volume;
- Will monitor my Ramp rate and Form on Intervals.icu to see if I’m staying in the green zone adding volume if necessary
- Will not shy away to switching some of of the SS workouts for group rides, I know they can be spiky but will monitor for overtraining and check my body if see they are making me tired.
I will updated after this 6 weeks of base training if I notice an increase in general fitness.
Other things
- I’m looking into joining a gym for some strength training, will start with probably only 1 workout per week, and always after riding as suggested in the podcast to not impact workouts.
- Been starting to always do 40g of carbs even for 1H bike rides to at least help with recovery and hunger.
Side-note: For the Ramp test intervals.icu reports 194W, not going to use this value but wonder why they got a diff result.
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They use very different ways to estimate FTP.
TR calculates FTP from the ramp test as 75% of the power during the last minute.
Intervals.icu estimates FTP from a maximum effort of between 3 and 12 minutes length, by looking at comperable data from other FTP curves.
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JMO, use 190W as FTP. Rather be 5 watts too low than 5 watts too high most of the time. (also I only ever use 0 or 5 for FTP, reality is it’s a variable range day-to-day anyway).
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Yeah, I realized I made that mistake in the bullet points, yeah I’m using Trainerroad 189w
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What was the max heart rate you ended at and how is that value compared to the max value you have seen before? If you were far from reaching your max heart rate you might want to try again.
In my experience I always reach the same maximum heart rate during the ramp tests (at most 1 bpm in difference). So if I do a test where I am not able to reach this value I will do the test again in a few days. The reason could be that I did not push myself enough or that I was too tired.
A part of training is also training the tolerance of pain. So the more VO2Max intervals you do the better you will be able to tolerate the pain.
In that case ,is it worth him doing a real ramp test ?
I do both, and find the AI is within a watt or 2 of my real test.
As a 28 year old , there’s plenty of room for improvement on a FTP of 184.
Chuck the POL plan and go for SSMV+extra z2 at the end.
Keep it consistent and be particular about keeping to wattage prescribed for your intervals and recoveries.
80% compliance is not good enough (in order to improve your FTP)
Keep positive and enjoy your training! 
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Now that I know you’re on TR baiting people, prepare for endless inquisitive questions! I’m an excellent bait-taker.
How not sustainable we talking?
100% agree with your points, by the way.
I’m just curious how you see this implementation going in the real world. Any takeaways here? How often possible without achieving burnout (not overtraining per se, just athlete saying “thanks but no thanks, this sucks”)? Should this be used with new athletes who want maximum possible rate of adaptations?
Even that is probably more variability than is necessary. Would you agree?
I bet you could ditch two of 3, 4, or 6, especially if the person is naturally relatively sprint-talented, and see virtually no loss in road race performance ability.
Universal question from what I’m surmising is a stance you hold. Here’s the stances I think you may have.
- Simplicity is good.
- Technology (software) often overcomplicates things.
- People absolutely overcomplicate things, often because software allows them to.
Am I in the ballpark there? If so, here’s the question:
Do you think that technology which adds variability to training efforts (or nutrition approach) but makes it simpler to apply for the athlete, because it’s effectively brainless since it’s done for them and they just do what they’re told, and which still gets the same results as the more simple ‘lower-tech’ approach, like your list here, is worthwhile? Or is the brainlessness of the user a serious negative in some way. If so, what way.
To what extent is simple better? And simple in what way? Simple by actual mathematical approach? Or simple by athlete experience?
I’d love to hear your thoughts here because I suspect these are things you’ve grappled with.
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Oh yes baby lessss gooooo
PHDs fight across multple thread
Let me get ready
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pour me a bag! 
My FTP has been stuck as well. Currently at 480w and can’t get it down. Sucks because I keep getting speeding tickets.
It’s fun to imagine.
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Channel your inner Wout!