I don’t want to get involved with this whole testing/protocol mess (because I don’t care) but I will say that even if you don’t have 30 minute climbs pushing out TTE is a valuable training tool for every athlete. This is an aerobic sport at all levels (maybe not track or DH). It’s the myth that crit racers only need to do 30/30s or sprint practice. You need to be able to get to the end of the race to actually sprint.
They talk about fatigue resistance on the podcast and other people talk about it, and anecdotally from personal experience if you want to improve your fatigue resistance - then start doing longer and longer threshold blocks until you can’t any onger. You will notice drastic improvements in the ability to hold all major zones at and below FTP longer. It’s also a great way to fine tune your RPE to what is sustainable and what “threshold” should feel like.
I don’t think I am missing the point at all: the work concluded that FTP ≠ 1 hour power for the vast majority of athletes. I tried to be very careful when composing my post, I always tried to specify that the study concerned itself with FTP as measured with Coggan’s 20-minute test protocol.
You are right that we have to distinguish between FTP and power at MLSS, in fact, between different FTP test protocols and MLSS. However, the question was not whether power at MLSS = 1 hour power.
That seems very uncontroversial and simple. And I would expect that this would still hold true if we did another study that determines power at MLSS in athletes and then measures TTE at this power.
Yes, but the study we are talking about delineated between 4 different classes of athletes, ranging from recreational riders to pros. So while this is an important caveat for the first of four, and it is less and less valid the more experience riders have. Hence, I don’t think this caveat changes anything substantially in the interpretation of the data.
First, figure out roughly how long you will need to get up the climb. A rough approximation suffices. If it is close to 1 hour, you could really approach this like a TT with some caveats. But since I think you cannot expect to extend your TTE at FTP much beyond 70 minutes, you will have to change your strategy and ride at a lower power.
Make sure you understand that your goal is to be as fast as possible. Please don’t read this as a suggestion that you should obsess about your weight! Your weight may be important, but if you lose too much weight, you could e. g. become prone to becoming sick. However, if you have some kilos to lose and there is time left, shedding some extra weight will definitely give you an edge as it may be much easier to gain W/kg through weight loss than increasing power. And it’ll be much more significant weight loss than buying those super expensive carbon rims or trashing your Ultegra groupset and replacing it with DuraAce.
Addressing the power side of the W/kg equation, remember that the goal is not to ride at FTP for as long as possible, but to maximize your power output over the event duration. And e. g. it’d be much easier to ride at 270 W when you have an FTP of 300 W (i. e. sweet spot) than to ride at 270 W when your FTP is 275 W.
More than half of the equation is mental: I love hill climb TTs because it is mostly me and the mountain. Drafting is typically less of a factor (5ish % average grade) or no factor at all. You have to go at your own pace, and you gotta learn to be comfortable in the hurt locker. What helps me is to double up on base training and do a polarized block and then a sweet spot block. The polarized block really makes me mentally tough, and all the sweet spot workouts then feel easy.
Nutrition is a big one, especially if the event lasts significantly longer than 1 hour and/or you are in a hot (and humid) climate. Make sure you get used to consuming carbs while riding. At the very least, it’ll decrease your RPE.
Practice outdoor pacing, which is different from pacing by power. What I mean is that it may be worthwhile to increase power way beyond your power target in certain situations such as hairpin corners or short kickers on the climb where the gradient increases a lot. Generally, you want to conserve your momentum and only change your speed/cadence gradually. You should also develop trust in your body and your pacing skills. Maybe you have a good day on race day and you can increase your power target. Or you don’t feel it that day and you need to adjust your ambitions.
Lastly, consistency is king. I’d rather do a LV plan, but really stick to it than to want to do more hours, but being unable to commit.
These are just my suggestions. While I think most of the advice is rather general and should, at least in part, apply to you, just make sure to put it in perspective. If, say, your body fat percentage is 12 %, please disregard what I wrote about losing weight.
I think that you are missing the point. @Yep 's comment was apparently meant to point out that 95% of 20 min power is not the definition of FTP, but only an estimate (and not a great one at that). The conclusion of any study that used that test can really just be tossed out the window, at least when it comes to the concept of FTP.
PPP: ~1 h (~40 km TT) power is to FTP as s is to sigma.
I re-read his post and you are right. I misinterpreted that bit. Although I’d still say that this is a misunderstanding of what FTP means. I think a more accurate rephrasing of what you wrote is that the result of the 20-minute FTP test is not a good estimate for power at MLSS, but — by definition — it perfectly captures FTP.
However, FTP is the power you get from whatever FTP test protocol you picked. Scientifically, I would not compare FTP numbers obtained from different FTP test protocols (including e. g. different versions of the ramp test).
I think a very important point you listed is nutrition / fueling. But sleep, for me, is a big one. I can easily tell how my training will be if I don’t get 8 hours of quality sleep and reduced stress of the daily grind.
I very often train indoors fasted, right before lunch or late in the afternoon so when I do my 1 hour max, I try to do it in similar conditions. I should have sufficient glycogen for the 1 hour max effort but sometimes, it might be psychological, taking in quick carbs does give a boost. Marginal gains, like aero socks… But all that said… flexibility is also important so I know I should not get locked into one set of conditions but in the end, it’s what I’m after as goals and milestones.
Great stuff to consider.
If not hot and humid, do you think there’s a value in monitoring HR and try not to exceed a cap or ease up when you do?
IOW save high HR for the last X minutes to the line and practice doing that at various % grades.
More likely than not, your body will be flooded with adrenaline simply because you are racing. This leads to an elevated heart rate, and if you checked it religiously, it could stress you out even further and artificially cap your performance. I’d also do other things that keep you calm and leave you feeling prepared. E. g. if your hill climb lasts 1:30 hours, and people tell you you could get away with a single bottle, you might feel better taking a second one just in case. Stuff like that.
Excited about this ramp test, I had been using AI FTP which said I had gotten up to 251 from my starting 245 back in February but was then trending back down to 245… I had been in a taper then took a week off after a recent century+ gravel race. Either way I’ll take the results, 20 ftp points in 4 months! I was just hoping to utilize AI FTP a little more reliably as I hate ramp tests.
question - how does this feature work? if I set my ftp 30w lower and then I ride a workout at 90% ftp, how would TR then know that I could way more? So if I always ride workouts below my “correct” threshhold and underperform, how will TR know that I would be capable of doing more?
A lot of the “how it works” is what we like to call “secret sauce…” In other words, we can’t give away too much info on that.
We used Machine Learning (a subset of Artificial Intelligence) to analyze millions of rides to understand how FTP changes over time and in response to training. Our system looks at your personal biometrics and the unique details of your recent and past cycling data to detect your FTP without the need for maximal efforts or specific workouts.
The feature works best with accurate data, so making sure your FTP history in TR is correct is important to make sure you get the best results with AI FTP Detection. Setting your FTP 30 watts lower than it should be would skew your future AI FTP Detections to be unideal.
Hey. Thanks for the reply explaining it. I should have elaborated more on why I did ask this.
I came back from an injury so I did not ride a lot for one year. So my ftp was kind of at 230-250 before but now after almost one year of break I think it’s more likely to be around 185ish. TrainerRoad calculated it with 230 based on my past rides. But they/you did not realise they are about 1 year ago and some of the better performances even longer. So you should include breaks and low volume for longer periods into your calculation.
Got it. In some instances, it may still be a good idea to do a Ramp Test or 20-Minute Test – coming back after about a year of less training due to injury would probably be one of those cases. That year acts as a pretty big gap in the accurate data AI FTP Detection needs to function properly, and, of course, the algorithm won’t know if you’ve been recovering from an injury.
Once you reset your FTP with a benchmark test and get through a few weeks of training, AI FTP Detection will get you dialed back in without the need for further fitness assessments!
