I would go with 305. Why? Because with lower FTP you will train a little more efficient and go longer and you will shed some fatigue in the process. It is only 5% difference so even if its lower you still get a lot of adaptations. If you recover and you return to normal feel of threshold just up it.
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305 or lower given your short power efforts. There is no downside to using 300 besides the hit to your ego and there is only upside.
Iāve resisted chiming in on this thread for a while but what Iād offer is that when you do a 3x20 @95% SST workout with a correctly set FTP, it should feel like a 7 out of 10 RPE.
If you are hitting 8 or 9 RPE for that workout, you are either tired and need rest, or your FTP is set too high.
Getting the right FTP is critical to doing sweetspot work that will actually raise your FTP rather than just make you slow and tired.
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Thanks, lads. Iām fine with w/e it is because it is what it is. I race, and while FTP is crucial, there is SO much more at play and Iām not chasing some vanity number aka āvFTPā. Iām just trying to raise it as much as possible.
What I find rather interesting is that @ ~305w my FTP is only 74% of my best 5-min power and 47% of my best 1-min power. That seems rather low, no?
When I switched coaches in 2019 and did baseline testing after a VO2 block, my FTP was 290w with a 416w 5 minute power. There is no point in benchmarking FTP against 1 minute power.
Probably just means youāll get some good benefit from properly prescribed sweetspot and aerobic work.
Whatās your 4hr power right now?
Not high enough. But really, I couldnāt tell you as my 3+ hour rides tend to be all endurance pace around 190-220w.
Hereās a 60K gravel race at the end of May coming off the heels of a really nice VO2max block. This was well-rested with a positive TSB and feeling fresh. I finished 3rd out of 250 and felt like I was flying.
You benefit from going longer in your endurance rides. 5-6 hours at 200-220w would help in a lot of ways.
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Most definitely. Iām sort of hitting a cap at around 4 hours right now with my once-per-week long ride. Iāve been working with that as well as supplementing it with a mid-week 2 hour endurance ride.
Moving forward, my plan is this:
Tues / Thurs / Fri / Sat are the best days for longer rides so Iām still playing with the structure of these weeks. I might opt for my first FTP day to be on Monday, then a medium (2hr) endurance ride on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, FTP on Thursday, SS or another medium endurance day on Friday, and a long ride on Saturday.
Week 1 (@ FTP = 95-98% of FTP)
Day 1 (Mon): Endurance Day (1.5-2 hr)
Day 2: FTP Day (3x15 @ FTP or over/unders)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: FTP Day (2x25 @ FTP
Day 5: Sweet Spot (1x45 @ 90%)
Day 6: Endurance Day (2.5-4 hr, depending)
Day 7: Off
Week 2 (@ FTP = 95-100% of FTP)
Day 1: Endurance Day (1.5-2 hr)
Day 2: FTP Day (3x20 @ FTP or over/unders)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: FTP Day (2x30 @ FTP)
Day 5: Sweet Spot (1x60 @ 90%)
Day 6: Endurance Day (2.5-4 hr, depending)
Day 7: Off
Week 3 (@ FTP = 95-100% of FTP)
Day 1: Endurance Day (1.5-2 hr)
Day 2: FTP Day (1x60 @ FTP or over/unders)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: FTP Day (2x40 @ FTP)
Day 5: Sweet Spot (1x75 @ 90%)
Day 6: Endurance Day (2.5-4 hr, depending)
Day 7: Off
Week 4 (Recover)
Week 5+ (CX racing and FTP maintenance)
Not really, my 5 min power is 420 and FTP 315-320, so 75%. It is 60% of my 1 min power but my short power is non-existent.
Can you tell this to my girlfriend?
And could you also help me to find a friend, because 5-6h alone is not so much fun. My mind becomes a little bit sad around 4h and I like loneliness.
But to be serious do you do 5-6h rides on the trainer also? Or you leave those longer rides for outside?
4 to 4.5 hours on the trainer is no problem. I do that regularly.
5 to 6 on the trainer is hard and I usually do those outside, but the KJs for those is lower due to coasting stoplight, etc.
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So this is next step for me and something I need to work on. My mental capacity on the trainer usually stops around 3:30 for an endurance ride. I like 3h rides but with some work during them (letās say 4x15@FTP or 3x20 O/U). And implementing the 3h work worked wonders in my second year of training. But the more I train, the more I see the relation of Z2 (and volume) to my performance on my bike. Maybe I only need to find something more interesting for my mind to focus on.
Ok sorry for asking questions but knowing your abilities I am quite interested to improve mine (learn from the best :)) - with those 4h rides do you opt for higher power or do you rather focus on time without generating too much fatigue? So letās say 0.65-0.7 IF? Probably you do this by RPE only but I am curious how it lands usually as a regular Z2 ride.
RPE. Longer is better than harder. Start on the easier end and just work your way towards a sustainable pace.
I have some other things I look at, but iāll save those for now since I want to write up something more structured to say about it.
All of the things that I do are well discussed in various podcasts and I have a coach, so really I take zero credit other than being willing to do work and have better than average genetics.
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But it is always interesting to hear the athlete side of things and how it works in practice on a living person. I know that everything is highly individual but for me technical/coaching side of cycling training sometiems is more interesting than cycling itself
Do you find having the smart bike to help with long workouts? Or are you doing them on a real bike on a trainer?
The smart bike is quiet and smooth, which makes it a nice piece of kit, but Iāve done plenty on a regular trainer as well.
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Yes, although you need not over test. A complete power test (e. g. 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 20 minutes) will take something out of of you, think of it as doing 3 ramp tests in terms of efforts, so I donāt think it makes sense to do that too often.
Instead, you can also use your training to validate your targets. E. g. before a hill climb TT, I like to do long steady state workouts to simulate the race, something like Gray (2 x 20 minutes at FTP). When I do well on those workouts, I rest assured that I am in good shape. This is also how I gauge whether my FTP in TR is set at the correct value.
Based on the numbers, I would start with 315 W and see how that works. An important reference is your 413 W 5-minute power, I think.
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See above. I forwent any VO2/map testing today since I did that a few weeks back. Today was a hard session, no doubt about it.
Doing an outdoor TTE test is really tough, I had to make a couple of unfortunate stops. Itās equally as difficult to perform one in a room thatās 75-80Ā° ambient (garage) so I work with what I got.
305-315 feels right. Admittedly Iām pretty disappointed since I did 327w for 45 min back in February (when I was very fresh) coming off nothing but endurance and tempo in December-January. Lots of work done for zero improvement in thresholdāit is what it is.
Cheers!
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Iām confused by this: if you focussed on endurance and tempo work, this is exactly what I would expect. If you do this, you raise the tail end of your curve below your FTP, but less so your FTP, at least not the way FTP is used in TR. (Iām writing this, because FTP can be defined in different ways by different people. Common ones are lactate threshold 2 and your āhour powerā since time trialists manage to hold their FTP for 50ā60 minutes.)
Thatās why you need a purpose when training, otherwise we canāt say whether you are doing better or not. Different types of training will affect different energy systems, i. e. it will target different parts of your power curve. Also, I would not judge fitness just based on power, depending on what you do, repeatability may be crucial. So for example, while a shorter team sprint left me gassed and I put out less W for way shorter last year, this year I was able to take out my watt hammer for way longer and after a short recovery could hammer again if I wanted to. My FTP was within 1 W. I gained fitness in a way that isnāt immediately obvious in my power curve.
You wrote that your normalized power was 327 W, but your average power was 307 W. So the actual number you should use is 307 W, not 327 W.
Thanks, I appreciate your input thus far, but I think youāre misreading me or Iām being confusing.
My normalized power for todayās TTE test was 322 with an average power of 307w for 46:38. I did a TTE test back in February that yielded 327w avg and 327w NP (done indoors). Iām simply lamenting at the fact that I had my best TTE test coming off no threshold work, just tempo, endurance and weekly strength training last fall/winter. I was a lot fresher back then too with much less intensity in my legs.
Re: current FTPā¦
Iām slighted that my threshold has dropped despite a really nice VO2max block in April & May, along with some of my most focused endurance riding ever. However, massive gains in 30s-5min power, repeatability, and anaerobic capacity have been realized, so not all is lost. Iāve got a lot of good race-fitness. I just anticipated a nice bump in FTP from the VO2 work, but that seemingly hasnāt happened.
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