Bah and double Bah!
I figured I’d do a 20 minute FTP test as my workout this morning after the ramp on Sunday. It was all going swimmingly until I got to the leg clearing bit, when the resistance just died away. I thought it was an issue with my turbo, and re-calibrated, fiddled about a bit, then realised it was in resistance mode and put it back into Erg mode. At this point it made me do 400W! :o I can’t do that for 5 minutes before a 20 minute test. Eventually I decided I would put it back into resistance mode and fiddle with it and wait and see. It got to the rest period and went back into erg mode and worked properly, and I realised that TR must have put it into resistance mode so I could control the resistance and spin. Sigh.
I decided to the the 20 minute test again. I figured I could get a 4 or 5 % bump in FTP, so I put the intensity up to 104% in the app. Then, when the 20 minute period started it said I needed to do 254W, so I fiddled with the resistance slightly so I could do around there. I worked hard, but I got to the end with some juice left and hammered the last minute. The average for the interval was 254W, so bang on target. My new FTP is 241W. 241W. That’s right, even though I put the intensity up to 104% it doesn’t seem to have changed my target power, so I put myself through all this, and the only reason why my FTP changed at all is that I smashed the last minute. If I had known that 104% of my previous FTP required 265W for 20 minutes I reckon I could have done that (or at least died trying), but I didn’t wawnt to blow up and thought that sticking to 254 was proper pacing. So frustrated.
https://www.trainerroad.com/career/duncanm23/rides/49786785-20-minute-ftp-test