For me it’s too much to test both FTP and MAP on a regular schedule. I was thinking that the original poster wanted to design workouts based on a % of MAP. In my mind, it seems like an unnecessary complication.
If one had analytical software, one could keep track of 5 minute power versus FTP, right?
But lets say one wants to test MAP and FTP four times per year. What do the percentages tell you? How do they guide future training?
Yes! Although in my mind, you have to do that if you validate the FTP you obtained from your ramp with suitable workouts. I seem to be one of those weird FTP = 75 % MAP unicorns, but if I were not, I’d find my factor over time, and correct the ramp test result accordingly first.
Another piece of information that ramp test gives is your heart rate at failure. When my heart rate at failure of the ramp test was low, it pointed to fatigue (thanks @kurt.braeckel!).
Spot on. Be careful what you measure and what you optimize for.
E. g. last season I had to take a 4-week break, and afterwards, my FTP was still very, very high. But my endurance was shirt. After I validated my FTP on an outdoor ride (because the result was completely unexpected and unusual), I did a 15-minute threshold effort followed almost immediately by a 117 % VO2max effort, PRing on a ~7-minute climb. So I am pretty sure my FTP was correct. But after that second climb (which was the fourth hard effort on the ride), I had to limp home, even 60ish % FTP felt uncomfortable. So I restarted training with a polarized block to work on my endurance, because in the past, polarized blocks worked very well to improve my endurance. It worked.
Point being, be aware of the different dimensions of fitness and train accordingly.
That’s a pretty good list, and the only metric I’d add is consistency.
I remember talking about additional metrics when I complained about the lack of good analysis tools included in TR. Apart from workout consistency, there was no other universal, easy-to-understand and/or easy-to-measure metric that applied to a very wide class of athletes.
TTE at FTP can be important, but need not be. For a crit racer it is likely not an important metric. Even for a TTer it is only important that their TTE >= event duration. Extending it to, say, 70 minutes is probably not a good goal for time trialists either.
Other things can be harder to measure. E. g. you could first do 3 hours of Z2 and then do sweet spot intervals to train your toughness. That might be good prep for a longer one-day road race with quite a few climbs peppered in.
If you verify ramp test results with workout you are keeping track of MAP and FTP with no extra effort. It need not be the way you do things, but it works quite well for me and all I need to do is a 20ish-minute ramp test every now and then.
That has worked very well for me (n = 1), so something else works better for you, that’s totally cool, too. 
In principle you can do that with TR’s power curve, no?
However, that is assuming that you are populating the power curve with all out 5-minute efforts.
My FTP-to-MAP ratio has been remarkably stable. The only time it budged a bit was when I spent one season on a crit plan. The ramp test would overestimate my FTP by about 1 percentage point rather than being spot on. Since the crit plan focuses on short, hard efforts, this makes sense: it raised my MAP more than my FTP. Put another way, I had achieved the training goal that I had set for myself.
I spent the next season working on my base and longer efforts, i. e. training that was complimentary to the crit plan. That raised my FTP more relative to my MAP. Overall, this worked well for my as I reached my best-ever FTP and MAP after those two years.
The way I visualize this is that raising MAP raises the height of my power tower whereas the second year broadened its base. If the tower becomes too tall and narrow, fitness can become brittle. If it is too broad and stubby, you are holding short of your potential and you are dull.
I’m pretty sure on intervals.icu you could make that graph (MAP versus FTP)
As for what it means or what to do about it, I just want to say thanks to everyone for indulging in this crazy discussion because I’ve learned things about training and history that give me a lot to think about.
If FTP is a high percentage of MAP you likely want to work on MAP to increase your head room. If FTP is a low percentage of MAP you can work on increasing your FTP without worrying you are going to bump into your MAP ceiling.
There was an interesting article (think it was in Outside). It was about a masters marathoner who won the London marathon in the 80s. He is still running marathons around 2 hours 40 mins in his 50s. Even though his VO2 max has come down in those years he’s increased the percentage he can run at of it. He can run at 91% of VO2 max for those 2 hours 40 mins. His son runs at about 80% of VO2 max for a slower time (about 2 hours 55 mins I think).
Wild so this guy has been doing something that increased his fractional utilization by possibly 10% if we assume he and his son had a similar baseline. I wonder if he’s an outlier or if that type of thing is generally possible.
Just been reading a study from 2021 looking at what would be required from elite marathoners to run a sub 2 hour marathon. They reckon a 59 kg runner would need to burn oxygen at 71 ml/kg/m to go sub 2 hour. Which came up at around 92% of the VO2 max of the runners they tested. The runners (all run sub 2 hour 10 min marathons) generally had a LBP at about 90-91% of VO2 max. Thus it seems a fractional utilisation that high (plus a high VO2 max) that you can hold for just over 2 hours is what you need to be an elite marathoner these days. Thus normal for the elite.
So then what is a “high percentage” of map? 85? 90?
The same thing has been reported about Paula Radcliff. (Skiba’s book I believe). I seem to recall him saying she became more efficient.
I understand the whole raise the roof, extensive/intensive, ‘base to race’ methodologies. I’m just wondering if coaches actually monitor fractional utilization that closely.
This is why I test 5 min power and Cp… however what i an realizing is 5 minutes max avg power over Cp is more if a test of W’ and ime not a good proxy for vo2max… for myself as i had not been doing much work over Cp and have a dreadful estimate right now that is about .75 of what it used to be.
So a five minute test could be improving just by increasing W’ and not vo2max
That’s why Coggan’s rider profile chart has 5 s, 1 min, 5 min and threshold power on it. Those for really categorize your power curve quite well.
I’m not so sure. I reckon that the vast majority of coaches implement a version of structured training. Even if the athlete has no particular performance goals, you need periods of rest (on the micro, meso and macro scale) to ensure recovery and help the athlete improve.
I reckon that coaches spend a lot of time on things that we don’t talk as much about here on the TR forum:
(If I am wrong, anyone who is coaching or has been coached, please correct me.)
I think the simple answer is that it depends on the coach and their philosophy/approach.
I wonder what coaches who implement unstructured training do?
My self-coaching years were “loosely structured training” - does that count?
No goals and no aims for your rides, just free riding as you felt ?
I had two events, both supported with a lot of free riding and early attempts at “doing interval training” but really the focus was on riding what I later learned was “happy hard.”
Ah tempo / Sweetspot fun
Yeah one guiding principle was “more intensity if you can’t do 8-12 hours/week” and somehow it worked. Should have bought more lottery tickets.
Which works for a limited period until it doesn’t
