I’ve created a custom workout Grasshopper. It’s 4x1-minute threshold efforts followed by four 12-second standing “all out” sprints at 300% FTP, with 4-minute recoveries in between.
It’s intended to be hard, but definitely doable. In fact, I was able to complete it and thought it could be made just a touch harder… Then I noticed that TR gave it workout level 28.7. That looks high!
I believe this is a known issue for custom workout creations that is yet to be resolved. Perhaps @IvyAudrain can share some insights as I recall this being brought up several months ago, but never saw if it was something the team had fully addressed.
By my best educated guess, I believe this is particularly a problem on workouts that target multiple zones, not necessarily custom workouts.
For example, your custom workout has a few sprints, so it got tagged as an anaerobic workout.
But it has a few threshold intervals in the mix, and these are bumping up the level of the workout.
I made a custom workout a while back with 4x15-minute intervals at 95% FTP. This got marked as a 5.3 Threshold workout, and that seems reasonably accurate as far as I can tell.
On the flip side, look at the workout Ragged +2, this is an official TR workout. It ramps up from 60% to 100%, spending a total time at threshold for about 13:30, but this is tagged as a 5.5 Threshold workout.
That’s something I do regularly too. Mostly to increase my TTE @FTP. Pretty simple strategy where I start with a relatively easy 20min @ 200% and slowly build that up to 60min @ 200%. Once completed I do a RAMP test to see if my FTP increased. 100% can recommend
20 minutes at 200% should not be “relatively easy” - if you can it implies your FTP was set badly, badly wrongly!
The standard/traditional FTP test is based on 95% of 20 minute effort. (or 90% the 2x8, or I believe the ramp uses 75% of peak 1 min power). My FTP is around 280, so 20 mins at 200% would be 560 watts… I can’t do that for 2 minutes let alone 20…
If you are doing workouts like SuperTaku, your FTP has been set incorrectly.