Ah, ok, you are speaking of a different TTE test. Sorry about that, but you mentioned quite a few data points and I lost track.
You wrote that you had to make “unfortunate stops” during the TTE, which must have lowered your average power, not least because you had to accelerate to speed. That’s one of the difficulties with doing very long efforts outdoors, there are very few stretches of road that allow you to do uninterrupted 1-hour efforts.
I still maintain that part of the problem is that you did not set yourself clear goals. You are bummed, because you seem to only look at your FTP and not at the “massive gains” you did on shorter efforts. If the latter is your goal, your training has been a success.
IMHO unless you just train because training is fun, you should set yourself productive goals to work towards. That sets expectations, tells you what workouts do to in what order, etc. This season I chose to work on my short-term power just to shake things up, two years of rolling road race plans are enough. Plus, I want to try crit racing (this weekend is my first race!).
Secondly, I set myself different goals riding indoors than outdoors. Indoors TR tells me what to do (for the most part). But outdoors I try to e. g. work on my pacing or be disciplined and stay in the power zone I want to work on that day. Pacing is a skill that needs to be honed, for example, and cannot be duplicated indoors, because outdoors you should ride to preserve momentum or use momentum to your advantage.
Yeah, this thread has blown up into something I hadn’t intended! I’m even getting lost.
Well, I had/have goals and they are/were:
Incorporate fall-winter strength training
Execute a dedicated VO2 / race-prep block to be ready for my A-race at the end of May, and podium the race. Finished 3/250
Focus on building a more robust aerobic engine via more Z2 work (historically I’ve neglected this, and focused on too much intensity around sweet spot or threshold)STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS
Coming out of May my goal was to pull FTP up from the bottom thinking I made some headspace given the big block of VO2 max work and an excellent spring race. However, illness and some summer vacations have made compliance less than optimal, but I’m trying.
Now I’m looking to hit a solid block (3 weeks, 6 weeks, I’m not sure yet) of FTP work leading into CX season (primary racing discipline) and hopefully grow the FTP along with capitalizing my increased anaerobic work capacity (something I’ve struggled with)
If all goes according to plan, I’m hoping to have my most successful CX campaign in the last 4 years of racing that discipline.
The goals are there, they just aren’t as defined as “work on short power”. It was more about getting in the best shape possible for my May race, which is the first race in about 18 months. After that it was let’s see if we can spring board off that fitness and realize some nice FTP gains.
This is what I mean, though: if you have an A race, you should try to find out what kind of efforts you need to be good at to compete. Podium on my A race is not an actionable goal; the word actionable is key. You should convert an outcome goal into several process goals.
What are the decisive points, e. g. is there a short climb? Do you ride a loop repeatedly or from A to B? What is your race strategy? Do you think your weaknesses will be limiters? From that I would set training goals. If you don’t have any limiters, you could work on accentuating your strengths, for example. If you think your endurance and repeatability are a weakness, you should work on that. But you don’t necessarily see the latter reflected in a raised FTP. Or even in a lifted power curve.
Secondly, the later you get into the season, the more you should worry about specialty training, which is not about raising your FTP at all, but prepping you for race-like efforts.
Nevertheless, it seems you did alright if you podiumed, congrants on that (especially out of a field of 250, that’s impressive!).
No doubt, I didn’t want to get more granular than I have. I knew heading into this season I would be well served by doing an extensive aerobic phase in order push out my ability to hold a high percentage of FTP for long (for me) durations. In this case 2-2.5 hour races. I also knew that I would have to be sharp toward the end, specifically for a couple of short 2-3 minute climbs, hence the intensive aerobic block leading into the race.
Still need to be more judicious about doing 3/4 of my weekly volume at lower intensity.
But if you asked me whether or not I had numbers (e.g. 500w for 4-minutes) I would have said “not really”.
Maybe more outcome than process oriented, but I definitely didn’t go about the process in a Willy nilly fashion.
