Hi everyone, I’m new to cycling and have just got onboard with TR so sorry if this is a stupid question…
I completed a ramp test last week which showed my FTP at 166.
I completed the Goddard-4 (sweet spot) workout today and the first bit was fine, but the last two sustained intervals expect you to stay just below your FTP for approx 5 mins, at which point my HR went upto 180 (I’m 37) resulting in me having to stop during the last interval.
Is this normal? I was under the impression that SS training was meant to keep your HR at a sustainable level but this felt like a drawn out vo2 effort to me.
Shall I lower my FTP or do a different fitness test?
How much training history do you have with your power meter? If not a lot, you could reassess in 2 weeks I think when AI FTP can give you a better number.
I’d roll with what you have for now, I suspect you’re pretty new to training in general and I think you might come around pretty quickly to the workloads. Until you get a better feel for training, instead of ending the workout early, just do easy recovery watts instead.
Not alot on the trainer, only stated a few weeks ago. I’ve almost exclusively been lifting weights for 15 years hence the poor aerobic fitness so maybe just a case of sticking with it until I acclimatise as you said…
Based on this info I would suggest using a slightly lower FTP than the one that the ramp test indicate. Weight lifting tend to favor anaerobic capacity and combined with under developed aerobic capabilities longer intervals can be challenging. There is no shame in being conservative in the beginning. AI will push you soon enough anyway.
This seems to fit with my experience thanks. I’m not too bad on the sprints but sustained efforts I’m really bad on. I suppose this is what you get from doing only anaerobic exercise for years…
Good anaerobic capacity can completely skew the ramp test. If you have big anaerobic contribution to your testing, unfortunately the only solution is long power test to burn through those anaerobic resources. If you have good anaerobic power, even 20 min test can easily overestimate your FTP.
The other thing is, as you are new to this, that you do not have any muscle endurance so you recruit a lot of fast twitch fibers pretty soon, and they require more oxygen - hence higher HR. Not to mention quite obvious issues as really good cooling or just simple thing as lack of blood volume, so also higher HR.
As you can see there is a lot of factors that can contribute to your issue. So welcome to the cycling training, where nothing is really obvious, everyone has an opinion and understanding “why” will take almost the same amount of time (or even more) than training itself
All good points but this is my thinking aswell. I’m not sure how a progressively difficult 15 mins translates to a 3 hour endurance ride?( I say this cautiously as a newbie)
Based on everyone’s comments I’m thinking I just need to lower my FTP slightly and work on my endurance/tempo. Clearly an area of my fitness I’ve just neglected for years.
I think that is your best bet. I seem to remember the ramp test saying to not stand up at the end to try and hang on those last few seconds. This can skew your FTP higher. My guess is all that weight lifting makes you a prime candidate to cheat the ramp test.
You could lower your FTP. On the other hand, I assume you are using Adaptive Training. You failed to finish, and I assume you ranked the workout with the highest difficulty score. It should give you adaptations (new workouts) that you are more likely to finish.
Also, @Reevo , you’ll find that you’re going to frequently be prompted with a post workout survey asking you how you would rate the workout experience. It behooves us all to be honest so that the AI can adjust future workouts accordingly. Sometimes the AI intentionally gives us more difficult workouts to see if we can handle it (or not). Sometimes it gives us easier workouts if we’ve been struggling lately or if the AI determines that we need to recover a bit. Trust the AI workouts and you’ll do just fine.
See: Post-Workout Surveys – TrainerRoad
