I did a road race this past Sunday, analyzing my race I noticed that my I.F. was 1.01 for about 1hr and 40min race, my NP was 268. My FPT currently is 266 (Intervals,icu 265, Xert TP 264, Wko5 265, and TR 267) Is it possible to end with that I.F and a NP higher the my FTP or is my FTP too low at the moment of the race? my FTP is set to 266 in my TP account.
Avg power 204 watts.
I don’t think you need to change your FTP, Mr Spiky!
See below: NP = 91% of FTP. Avg Power = 62% of FTP. Adjustment to FTP required = 0%
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Thanks but avg power isn’t the best metric to analyze data
My Spiky lol. Yes, without looking I’d expect to see a lot of punches over 400W.
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Sure…in this case, your VI was pretty high. Your NP was 268 but your avg. power was only 204. So you were going though periods where you weren’t putting out much power at all, followed by periods where it was very high power (VO2 max efforts, etc…likely as you were hitting hills or responding to attacks).
You have a variety of sources indicating a FTP of ~265. If it was just one source, I could understand questioning it, but in this case, you should trust them, IMO.
It was just a hard race!
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Supposedly “NP buster” rides are possible but I would just conclude FTP is too low. 100 minutes is a lot longer than an hour so I would just adjust FTP up so this race is somewhere 0.9-0.95 IF (that is with the assumption that the race was quite hard for you) and see how the TR workouts go after that.
NP being much different than average power is normal for racing. I don’t even look at average power for off road racing since it doesn’t indicate much of anything for most courses that don’t allow steady power.
Nor is NP if you’re using it the way you’re trying to use it here 
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post a screenshot like this:
where the slider in the upper left is completely slid over to the left.
That’s what I think, but in not an expert!
is up!
Please let me get some fresh popcorn!
Yeah, as I suspected, your ride was very inconsistent in terms of power output…lots of surges and lots of recovery. IMO, NP for high VI rides / races isn’t a great metric.
The real question is how do your workouts feel? Are they challenging or do you feel they are all pretty easy, no matter if they are SS, Threshold or VO2 Max?
I feel some of them are easy and others moderate and hard, but they don’t let me down.
An IF of 1.01 isn’t exceptional.
Now an IF of >1.05 for ~1 h would be, and would suggest that either your FTP is higher than the value you’re using, or that you have significantly above-average neuromuscular power AND anaerobic capacity.
Regardless, the response should be to retest FTP however you did it before, to see if it has really changed, rather than just dial it up based on NP. The latter can be an okay way of estimating FTP, but there are more (and less) accurate approaches.
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Sounds to me like your FTP is accurate, but as others suggested, you can always do an actual FTP test to confirm.
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