I have averaged 11 hours 57 mins a week this year, peak CTL of 123. Yeah a peak of 80 CTL for average 15 hours a week seems low.
I do 14hrs a week and am hovering around 100 ctl at the moment
I’ll carry on this thread in the spirit of sharing information.
So my highest was 60m of a 68m Zwift A+B race. That would imply to me I could have gone a fraction faster had it been just a 60m effort.
My limiter was lungs AND legs!
There were surges at the start, then it was a steady 10m before attacks went every 3-5 minutes. I hung on until about 30mins in a narrowing group. At that point there was really hard, sustained surge and I made a conscious decision that the pace was unsustainable and let the lead group of 5-6 go.
After that I essentially rode a solo TT effort until the end trying to hold on to second place in the B race. I was caught a minute or 2 before the line by another group and was in a small group sprint at the very end. Ended up 9th or so across the line and 3rd in the Bs (despite holding just over 4w/kg for 60m…)
My HR averaged 170 over the hour (theoretical threshold 171). I maxed out at 185 during the sprint (recorded max 187).
It felt much easier to put out the effort in a race situation than it did solo. Yes it was d*mn hard, but fun hard. OTOH, I find it very hard to do a genuinely maximum 60 min solo effort. I don’t mind gruelling interval sessions or similar but truly emptying the tank for 1hr is awful.
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To add to your reasoned points, FTP is useful in many ways beyond just demarcating training levels. Want to use power profiling to understand your relative strengths and weaknesses? Better have a good ballpark estimate of your FTP. Want to use quadrant analysis to gain better insight into the neuromuscular demands of your training sessions or races? Better have an even more accurate estimate of your FTP? Want to use TSS as an input to the Performance Manager to gain a macro view of your training? Your estimate of FTP needs to be more accurate still, as any error becomes squared along the way.
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so the performance was as per your 60 or 68 mins effort (average or normalised?). i’ll assume that was your max effort without blowing up. however was that 60 mins your threshold? if we think of threshold as a a crossing point of sustainability. the maths worked out that the average watts were ***watts for 60 mins, but internally were you beyond threshold then below threshold etc.
so from a training point of view, is this the best number to base training off? i’ll argue that a 60/68 min race effort will be much closer to your true threshold, than a 20 min etc test (providing its not sprint recover). its harder to bluff a long effort, because the recovery from highly glycolitic efforts takes place aerobically, and is a measure of fitness. i would guess it felt much harder than FTP at the time, because both legs and lungs were under pressure. i would think a flat effort would feel less horrific, but mentally harder because its not a race.
i find all zwift races are essentially TTs with surges, with little let up.
Yes, my best 60m ever effort as a % of FTP was minutes 8-68 of a 6m effort. 1.00 IF average power, 1.03 NP
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Yes. And…? Again, no-one was saying that they were. That’s the point you seem to have entirely missed.
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The point - again! - that by reporting non-maximal efforts, they are misleading people into believing that it is difficult to maintain 95+% of FTP for an hour. In point of fact, it isn’t.
But, by all means, carry on confusing people, since that seems to be what you are hell-bent on doing.
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No, they’re not. Because the thread isn’t what you can do for an hour, it’s what you have done for an hour. Again - you’re the only one who seems to be confused by this.
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You can keep insisting that is the case, but of course people are going to misinterpret what is shared.
And if people specify, “I did X% for an hour, but I wasn’t going all out”, then we are back to, WTF cares?
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Everyone commenting except you.
You can keep insisting that is the case, but everyone else seems to be managing just fine without doing so. (Or at least were until you insisted on muddying the waters.)
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Listen, this is very simple. You can’t go to the author of a book and tell them what their book is about anymore than you can come on to a thread like this and tell the person that posted it what their post is about. Is it possible that people might misunderstand? Of course, you clearly have. But if no one put anything out into the world for fear that someone would misunderstand, there would be nothing written, podcasted, painted, etc…
I posted this. All it was was wondering on my part. I have never tried to ride at ANY one power number for an hour straight. I don’t ride that way. I figured that I have these years worth of rides on Strava and they have a power curve on there. So I just looked at my all time power curve and found the highest one hour I’ve done. Then I checked that ride to see what the (Yes, I know problematic) FTP number was at that time and then found the percentage. I wasn’t looking for ultimate precision or to publish this as a scientific study. It was just curiosity. I’ve also wondered how many steps I’ve taken in my entire life. It would be cool to see the number if I could. That’s how my curious mind works.
Again, if you find this question right up there with “How many jelly beans have you stuffed up your nose?”, that’s fine. I don’t care if you find it interesting. But to act like we’re ruining the entire world of training here by just musing over a little bit of data is a bit much. As Sagan’s tattoo would say, why so serious?
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He has a point though people do. Not sure why you are arguing. People are shit at communicating and just say I did “x” there needs to be context so the reader can decide if the information is relevant in their eyes.
To be fair I think a majority of people would interpret your post the way @The_Cog has, and I guess that is his point.
There is baggage in this question and implication.
I understand that you are not interested in all at this, but just interested in some random number that doesnt really mean anything, and it is kind of interesting, in that it potential tells you that, some people don’t 40km time trial or around one hour efforts (maybe a majority) and some do.
Personally I have not done a 40km or one hour effort and my result is 99%
If I specifically trained it and then did a time trial effort I pretty sure my result would be about 102%
So did the replies satisfy your
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Well…he did literally write the book on ftp. So that argument cuts both ways. 
I have calculated from protocols, tested, and taken from various platforms what is labeled “FTP” and have had varied experience of testing against those numbers in a real world context depending on the testing protocol or the derivation system. Even within one testing protocol or system I’ve had what could only be described as inconsistent results.
To answer your question flatly. Yes I have ridden above a proffered “ftp”, I’ve also failed miserably to achieve a proffered “ftp” (Both of the times I’m thinking were in fact TR’s “ftp”.) Both instances likely heavily impacted by my predominant exercise pattern conflicting with whatever protocol (and magic sauce) they decided to add to it.
But then I find it to be a fun and interesting test to try an hour of power. I am actually about to do one as a baseline for a goal I’ve set for 2024. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Ha, to be honest not really. I thought it would be fun but it turned out I should have just looked up my own numbers to satisfy that curiosity and then left it at that. There’s nothing to gain for me to post this question here and then have to parse language and context and intent. I meant no harm to recreational cyclists or doctors who have written books about training. 
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Random question… well, because the thread is off the rails anyways… but who came up with the ramp test?
You might like this.
A.V. Hill is kind of known in this area.
In my mind, at least, the majority of cyclists who ‘know their FTP’ haven’t actually tried to ride at it for 60m solid. Partly because they have no reason to, and partly because it’s a very, very hard thing to do. That, I inferred, was the context of the question. After all, you can very easily follow a TR plan - let’s say for a rolling road race - and never see an interval anywhere near 60m.
Additionally, many of us can reach numbers in a competitive context that we would very much struggle to match when riding solo (not all, of course). In many of those competitive contexts, the power will ebb and flow, and the rider(s) are not targeting any specific power number. Many will only look at their PMs for pacing purposes.
I thought the q was interesting, anyway, and thought the general thrust was clear, semantics notwithstanding,
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Hill’s observation that VO2 didn’t increase further beyond some running speed “no matter how violent the exercise” was based on discontinuous bouts of exercise. Incremental exercise testing didn’t come along until the 1950s.