You shouldn’t “blow up” with this protocol. You start roughly 10% below your estimated FTP and slowly ramp up until you hit it, then just hold on. “It” being when you can feel that you are over FTP, regardless of what the numbers say. You can even do this without ever looking at the power numbers off of feel alone.
I for one have mentally blown up while doing a threshold effort (not even trying for 30+ minutes). And a few times didn’t feel like I had enough muscular endurance to go longer than 15 minutes. My first ftp test was a Friel 30 minute TT back in 2016, and I started doing long Moore-style tests in 2017 (before I had ever heard of Kolie Moore). Morale of the story - shit happens.
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- This
I gave my short summary as a courtesy to a question, with no aim for a deeper dive and certainly no intent to get help. I don’t care what people think of my brief characterization because I know what happened in the moment and what surrounded it. End of story for me at least.
PS: Happy BDay WW 
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Battery is also on my pump it up mix! Such a great song to get that last effort in.
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Yeah. Stuff happens.
Sometimes I’m old and slow.
Sometimes and old and not quite so slow.
Sometimes I’m old and even slower.
Sometimes I’m old and sitting on the sofa eating brownies.
It’s all good. I’m alive. 100% better than the alternative.
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Does anyone else struggle with this test during the summer?
I know it’s not summer but it was real feel 87° with 85% humidity at 7:30 am in south Florida.
I started too hard but also felt no power in my legs, I know there could be many reasons. I really didn’t feel any “ cooling” while attempting this test outside today, made it 20 minutes and gave up.
I’ve had no problems during “winter” or fall, it’s definitely rough today. I’m sweating just from standing in my garage typing this .
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I haven’t done one since April and probably won’t do another outdoors this summer. I did some VO2 intervals last weekend and it was brutal in the Houston heat/himidity, so I feel your pain!
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I definitely have to be pretty fresh going into one of these. I try and do them lower heat and humidity, but if you’re going to be racing in those conditions it would be valuable to know how much you can put out in the heat. Still need to go in fresh, rested, motivated.
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Yea it’s rough, I felt rested and fresh but breathing hot humid air wasn’t helping. It’s definitely a rough time of year for us to do hard or long efforts.
I don’t have any races anytime soon, so it’s not a big deal. I might take tomorrow off and try again,l Saturday but it’s supposed to be even hotter this weekend 
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I don’t race, so I’ve honestly considered using the summer for base and winter for hammering, but even inside the house it’s humid enough that a 2 hour Z2 ride is mentally taxing.
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I live in a hot, but dry area so the heat really isn’t as bad as the number implies. Also my favorite place to test is a climb into a canyon and the temperature drops as you go. My test July was 90° at ride start, 80° at FTP start, 70° at test completion. 80° when I got home.
That was followup a commute in 106° heat, but I did a long rest before heading out the door again. But probably single digit hunidity, so it really doesn’t feel nearly as bad as it sounds.
(More be 100+ today on my commute)
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I don’t go in overly fresh or rested, thats not realistic if setting training zones, the goal isnt to set the highest number possible, people forget this because their ego, but motivated yes, go in with high motivation.
If its hot and high humidity then I do it very, very early or very late or pick the best day of the week. Inside as many fans as possible.
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I’m going to disagree on this. If I do a Kolie Moore Test, I’m shooting for 40+ minutes continuous at FTP (or close to it), effectively you’re going to failure or close to it. You’re trying to find a physiological tipping point and TTE, not get a normal workout in.
If I’m doing a Threshold workout, I don’t think I’ve ever done a workout that could be basically close to failure like that. I think I’ve gotten up to longer TiZ (3x25 @ 100% looking quickly) but the stress isn’t the same with the breaks.
For me - workouts I don’t need to be overly fresh / rested. Tests I don’t need to be “Race Day Fresh”, but I do want to be what I’d call rested and ready to go. Because I’ll still be able to do my workouts, and also know what I’m really capable of on race day.
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Failure in the KM test though is different than compared to a 20 minute test. In the 20 minute test you are dying all the way to the end and then probably go as hard as you can for those last few minutes.
With the KM test, since you are taking the average of the last 20 minutes, you aren’t supposed to try and game the test with a sprint at the end. Also, around the middle of the test, I can certainly feel my FTP.
For me, it typically feels something like:
ok 240 watts. This is good and sustainable. I could do this for 10+ more minutes.
250 watts - this is a lot harder - I can feel I’m over the edge.
245 watts - yeah, this is better - I’m right on the line now.
At this point if I were 35 minutes into the test, I’d already know the answer was 240-245 watts. I could keep it at 240 and go for a long TTE or 245 and go for another 5 minutes, or try and peg it at 250-260 for as long as possible. I don’t think option three is very good once you have felt out your FTP with the DM test.
I will often just throw in the towel at 35 minute if I feel that I have sufficiently felt out my FTP. I don’t need to be a TTE hero. 
Huh? Surely you take the average of the entire effort, including the initial ramp?
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You are right. For some reason, I thought the directions said to use the average of the final 20.
Actually, I use WKO5 and every time I’ve done this test, WKO’s mFTP agrees with what I felt my FTP to be and I have been just going with that.
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Yes and thats why I said not overly fresh, semi fresh yes. And I’m looking at 45 -50 minutes.
To be honest it is easy enough to recover from you could do it every week (with very good aerobic capacity), not that it would be productive or a good idea.
I think we’re probably all saying the same thing. I personally need to be more fresh for a KM test than I do for a normal threshold workout. It’s harder for me than even a threshold workout where I spend more Time in Zone than the test. The breaks and the “reset” when you’re doing intervals make a difference.
The 20 minute test in some ways is easier than the KM test though. The first 15 minutes is getting progressively worse, and then the last 5 minutes is holding on for dear life and finish needing to lie on the floor, but it’s over faster…
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Depends what you mean by the “highest number possible” since FTP is two dimensional (amplitude and duration), but you’re kinda right, though I’m going to expand a bit here since I may be able to clear up a lot of the subsequent discussion. The way I read this is “you don’t want to set an unrealistic number” but I think the better the number you can set, the more useful it is.
The true purpose of the test is to find out what the FTP number is, and secondary purpose is TTE. The original test progressions were to ease someone into feeling things out in the threshold range. Ergo a valid FTP test—if you can feel it out—is as little as 1x5-10min. Setting a good TTE is great to have a reference value but I find it more practical to watch total interval time during workouts instead of re-testing. If we don’t get to true exhaustion during a test that’s fine with me but most of the time I want to see it, especially early season.
TTE can be just as useful as knowing the watts, since not only does FTP effectively fall when fatigued, TTE shortens as well, and usually before we see FTP dropping (it’s not actually don’t worry). I want someone to set the best number they can because it can act as the canary in the coal mine. If you can’t hit at least your normal FTP watts in training, that’s a sure sign you’re fatigued. TTE (interval durations are a good proxy for this) the same. During a busy race season I don’t usually want someone getting too close to failure in training but I do want to keep an eye on fatigue. Knowing what someone’s really capable of helps to set a good reference value for standard performance.
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