How long can you hold ~90% of FTP? 1.5 hours? 4 hours? Just curious where everyone sits.
Looking back at my workouts the longest I have done is 3x60m with 5m rest.
That sounds terrible
Surprisingly not too miserable. However at that point my tte was also ~70m so very different than if I had a much shorter tte.
On a trainer or outside? Either way that’s one impressive effort
I got up to 3x40 last spring and wrapped a SS progression yesterday with 6x20 and couldn’t quite finish the last interval. These take a lot out of me but I know it’s good training
Outside! Most I have done indoors is 2x60. I find it’s a lot harder to deal with the long stuff indoors due to heat buildup even if you have a lot of fans and a cold room.
Longest I’ve built up to is 1x150 minutes. I started at 4x15 and it took maybe 8-10 weeks. I’ve found you can add time pretty quickly if you’re motivated to do so.
1x105 at 93%. Actually aimed for 1x120 but unfortunately ran out of road with no good place to turn around, so pushed VO2max instead at the end (4min at 111% of FTP).
The longest continuous training interval at steady sweet spot I’ll do is 60 minutes. I could go longer if I really wanted to suffer, but I’d rather break them up with some recovery mixed in. The big advantage I can see to pushing more than ~30 minutes at a time is the mental side. My primary goal on sweet spot is maximum quality time in zone, not whether it’s all one continuous block. 2 hours of sweet spot in 20-30 minute chunks is better than a single 90 minute sweet spot interval (in my opinion).
I have done several races with IF higher than 90% for 3+ hours. One of those was a solo break on a flat-ish course for the last 2.5+ hours, so most of it was steady power. A race effort IF isn’t really the same as pure steady state for 3 hours, but that type effort is harder for me since I’m a steady state diesel guy. I’m going to say 3+ hours of steady 90+ IF is doable for me when I’m fit, but I’m never going to find out unless I sign up for a flat 3 hour steady TT. 4 hours would be a “maybe” for me, would definitely be tough with high chance of failure (need the right fueling, cooling, etc.). I’ve done 5.5 hours at ~.85 IF in a race where most of that was solo/steady time, but there is a big difference between .85 and .90 as you get closer to threshold.
The longest I’ve ever done is 1x60, but I plan to do a block this year looking at extending TTE. In the past I always just did whatever was assigned by TR, which was much shorter, but last fall I did a Fascat plan that had rides like “Do as much SS as you can until you get to 150 TSS” and I started trying to make that longer intervals instead of like 4x20. It’s hard to do though because I like to do this kind of stuff outside, which is complicated with such long intervals.
I’m at 1x90 at 92% as best single interval but I cap out at 2x60 and the two people I’m coaching I also got to do 2x60 recently. I think I may have more time in zone at 85% which may or may not be sweet spot (I favor 88-92% as the “zone”)
I’ve done 1x90 before, it’s hard finding a route to do these long intervals .
My last sweet spot workout before a rest week was 3x40-120mins at 90%. All in about 5 hours, it was a tough day but good training.
I’ve done 1x60 on the trainer, but usually I’ve finished up a progression at 4x30@90% with 5 minutes between intervals. When fresh and I’ve progressed up to it, that’s been pretty doable as a normal workout without being overly hard. All steady state erg mode for me.
Looking at the last 2-3 years I held 90% for 1h25min on the Leo 30 TT but there’s 5+ minutes of warm up in there for the actual race I held 93% of my then FTP 98% of my current FTP.
Indoors on average power it was 45mins back then
In the last 12 months
It was an hour out doors
and 45 mins indoor:
Attempted doing 1x120 @ 90% on the indoor trainer during the covid lockdowns. Cramped in the last 10 mins
plus nowhere to relax the legs, no upcoming corners you can stop pedalling, or a slight downhill, etc.
Same (as a peak.)
More often than not I build to 70 - 80 minutes.
Last year I just build up to 4x30 at ~90% during a 6 hour ride. So the last interval was at 4 hours in. In the past I did 1x100.
But that kind of riding isn’t really specific to my kind of racing (Crits) so I usually do a quick SS block in the fall before progressing to FTP and don’t really extend it super far.
But I have a plan to train for an Ironman in the coming years so I’m sure I’ll have enough of that in the future lol.
Isn’t it funny (or not funny), the larger the ftp the larger the differences (yes I know it’s based on percentages). Little old me with an FTP of 220, my sweet spot is 207 a 13 watt difference. You though with that chunky FTP of 341 has a 40 watt swing…