First race this weekend! New FTP?

Racing
#1

FIrst race of the year here in Phoenix this weekend. I’m supposed to ramp test Saturday but, since I’m racing Sunday I’m gonna skip it and ride easy that day.

I’m racing 35+ 1-4 which is probably ill advised. I’ll use the race as a yardstick to measure my fitness and see where I’m coming up short or struggling.

Last season when I was supposed to ramp test but there was a race that week, I’d look at the NP after the race and use it to adjust my FTP. Seemed to work pretty well despite not being a terribly scientific approach to testing.

If you’re out here, come say hi!

Wish me luck!

#2

More than one way to estimate an FTP.

"the seven deadly sins…er, ways of determining your functional threshold power (roughly in order of increasing certainty):

  1. from inspection of a ride file.
  2. from power distribution profile from multiple rides.
  3. from blood lactate measurements (better or worse, depending on how it is done).
  4. based on normalized power from a hard ~1 h race.
  5. using critical power testing and analysis.
  6. from the power that you can routinely generate during long intervals done in training.
  7. from the average power during a ~1 h TT (the best predictor of performance is performance itself).

Note the key words "hard “, “routinely”, and “average” in methods 4, 6 and 7…”
Okay, so #7 is obviously the “Gold Standard”. What about the others?

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#3

So what you’re saying is I can use my crit races NP to set my new FTP

#4

From my experience I would never use a crit NP for my FTP. My NP for crits is always higher than my FTP not just a little either. Crits are so surge that it really skews NP if you ask me.

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#5

If your race was over 40min and you were empty at the end then I’d say that the NP would be a decent estimation of your FTP.

#6

This is definitely the feeling I get too

#7

Maybe, to set your “Crit FTP”. It might give you a realistic level for doing anaerobic / sprint workouts. However it will very likely be completely wrong for doing sustained sweetspot and threshold intervals.

I know someone who can knock out 20 minutes of 20/40 reps with 300 normalised power, but struggles to do 15 minutes at a steady 285.

#8

This is me :joy:

But then I find anaerobic work MUCH easier than threshold and sweetspot work

#9

Or perhaps strictly speaking, you’re not doing sweetspot and threshold. You’re doing threshold and supra-threshold. Which is why they’re difficult.

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#10

I should note here that while I used this assessment method more than once last year, I do so with a rather large grain of salt.

-Hugh
my blog: ex-prosays.blogspot.com

#11

First race went well. I raced “up” in the 35+ cat. 1-4 race. NP from the race was 278. Bumped my ftp from 254 to 261 based on that. We’ll see if I pay for it or not. It went pretty well. I’m pleased.

Blogged about it here: https://cat1-to-cat4.blogspot.com/2020/01/new-home-state-new-team-first-race-of.html.

Hope you’re all well!
-Hugh

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