How long can you hold sweet spot?

How long can you hold ~90% of FTP? 1.5 hours? 4 hours? Just curious where everyone sits.

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Looking back at my workouts the longest I have done is 3x60m with 5m rest.

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That sounds terrible :sweat_smile::exploding_head:

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Surprisingly not too miserable. However at that point my tte was also ~70m so very different than if I had a much shorter tte.

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On a trainer or outside? Either way that’s one impressive effort :muscle:

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 :thinking:

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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”)

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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.

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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.

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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:

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Attempted doing 1x120 @ 90% on the indoor trainer during the covid lockdowns. Cramped in the last 10 mins :frowning:

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plus nowhere to relax the legs, no upcoming corners you can stop pedalling, or a slight downhill, etc.

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Same (as a peak.)

More often than not I build to 70 - 80 minutes.

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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.

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Possibly 90 or longer

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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…

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