To be honest, the TR plans are very good, and have a lot of thought and experience build in. For anyone new to this type of training, I think going by the plans is a good shout. At some point, you might find out that something doesn’t work for you, or doesn’t work anymore, and then you can start thinking about what to change. But you do need to get that experience in some way, and following the plans is quite a good way imo. (Unless you have a coach, who can take some of that learning experience off you).
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I both agree and disagree. Maybe meaningless is a better term. It is in Watts, but any measure of human performance in watts must also have a duration, which it sort of does, but sort of doesn’t. FTP is effectively joules/hr for example.
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You should be trying to push your 5 minute power up, MAP is irrelevant. MAP will increase whether you improve aerobically or anaerobically. You could improve your MAP result by increasing your FTP with lots of threshold work, but not improve your 5 minute power result much at all.
I agree that to take such a segment you should be trying to increase your 5 minute power (and reduce your weight). Harrington was suggesting going by just MAP and FTP, though.
MAP isn’t meaningless in the least. As I said, it is mostly determined by your VO2max.
In fact, tell me your MAP - and the protocol - and I can tell your VO2max to within about 5%.
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Amen to that🙏
Sorry, but “unitless” isn’t the same as “meaningless”. And the unit is Watt, as measured by a power meter.
You can then go on and define e.g. MAP as the maximum power (in W) over the last minute of a ramp test (acccording to xxx protocol). Or FTP as the maximum power that can be held for x amount of time. Though if you really say you’re holding e.g. 100W for 1 hour, you are actually talking about an amount of energy - 100 Wh, or 360 kJ.
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485w on the TR ramp test protocol. I weigh about 83kg.
Can you show your working too as I’m really interested. Thanks
68.9 ml/kg/min.
That’s based on normal efficiency and assuming your ‘MAP’ required 115% of your VO2max.
ETA: Updated to correct figure. Must have mistyped your MAP before.
Can you explain how it’s calculated? I just did another ramp test at the start of the ‘build’ phase and maxed with 499 for the final minute so interested about the updated VO2max figure. I appreciate it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt unless you go and get tested at a lab but nonetheless interesting to understand how it’s calculated and what it potentially means.
I used this formula.
VO2max in liters per minute = (power x 0.012 + 0.0035 x mass)/1.15
So (499 x 0.012 + 0.0035 x 83)/1.15 = 6.28 liters per minute
6.28 x 1000/83 = 75.6 ml/kg/min
The study below used a different formula, but the ramp protocol was also different, so not directly comparable. What it does show is the close relationship between ‘MAP’ and VO2max.
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thanks, that’s really interesting
It would also depend on the steps of the MAP test. The MAP test I do is 3 min/25 watt steps. I haven’t been able to finish the 350 watt step yet. I’ve twice tried an all out 5min effort and both times I am around 350. So a 3 min/25 watt step MAP test, lines up with my 5min power.
HTH
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Interesting!
Definitely, I can see that 3 minute ramps would be significantly harder. I mean the thought of doing 3 minutes threshold, 3 mins at 25w above threshold and then starting 3 mins of Vo2max level work would be really difficult to get through vs 1 min at each of those levels. I guess that’s why @old_but_not_dead_yet specified that he’d need to know the testing protocol - I presume the formula varies depending on the protocol since a 350w last step with 3 minute steps would logically equate to a much higher MAP as measured with the trainerroad approach
Note that their ramp protocol is the 25W/3min one, which generally means a longer total test time and lower Wpeak. Would it be reasonable to surmise that the relationship would grow less close and the r value shrink if using the Trainer Road ramp protocol, which is shorter and therefore allows a higher anaerobic contribution?
(I’d also make a similar assumption regarding the 20km TT - if it was increased to a 40km TT I imagine you’d see an even lower correlation with Wpeak)
Possibly, although just how much precision might be lost isn’t really clear.
There is of course Morton’s approach of doing multiple ramp tests with different slopes to try to sort all of these things out.
I’ve done the 3’ test once, but the 2nd time I had to do the 8’ step test which they used for the Quickstep riders in that same lab. It’s a lot harder finishing your final step after 18’ or after 48’ haha. Having to finish 8’ at 300W at the end is quite tough I can tell you.
FUN! 
