How should I proceed? Bailing on ramptest after decent block of training

Before Christmas I got almost all-time best FTP of 271 (PR273).
During holidays I had to skip two rides on Christmas and two on new year.
After that I was doing well on all rides.
This week I had to bail on ramp test on around 16min mark that would have placed me at 230W FTP. I of course declined that and plamed on the poor sleep I had after the rest week.

Now I had to bail on my palisade today middle of my sustained build MW. I had quite Doms in my legs due to short xc classic ski exercise Wednesday. (First in over decade) Because of that I had skipped my yesterdays ride completely.

So the question is. How should I proceed? Should I retest when legs feel good again? Or should I just keep going with the workouts since I was nailing them before recovery week. I’m just afraid that I will fall of the progressive wagon of the workouts since they keep getting harder every week.

Could you give more context? What were the types of workouts before that you were successful? Can you think of anything else that would have caused you to bail on the ramp test?

It may be that you’re also adding in xc skiing and that’s adding stress on the body you aren’t accounting for. Are you still doing xc skiing?

This is what I would consider doing with what you have written. Depends on how your body is feeling of course. You could be coming down with something, sleep could be to blame…I’ll be last to know!

Forget ramp test. Nothing mentally worse than having to bin workouts, makes you question everything. I wouldn’t over think this either. Keep current FTP and reduce intensity by up to 10% and start your workouts.

See how it goes for a couple of workouts then adjust by a percent or two each few days as required. You should know how things should feel after a workout. Hopefully after a few weeks you’ll ramp back up to 100% and be ready again for when the next ramp comes around.

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I would stick to the 270FTP and go on feel. Workout too easy, up it a little. Too hard, drop it a little.

230 from a ramp test = 1 min @ 307w. There’s no way that’s right.

Hi
FTP test is hard , and its a mental state. missing sleep and having DOMS ll add add to stress in life.
You are getting near that mental barrier of 273W. Forget the numbers just now. Do the training, eat well recover well, do not start adding stuff in that you have not done in previous months of Training. If after a week you keep failing on some of the Tough stuff, it will be either 3 minutes at 122% intervals or it will be Over and Under’s then it might be time to Retest and start Base again. I Just think you have had a Bad FTP test we all have them. And Doms for Palisade. The thing to factor in is you are getting near your best performance so it will take greater effort and Sucking it up to get through some of the sessions. I am just reading Joe Friels Book on training with Power meter, and looking at Efficiency and Decoupling, this would be worth looking at. In terms of where one is in the training cycle?

Efficiency factor: interpretation question

Fang mountain +1
Bashfully
Carpathian Peak
Elephants +4 that I had to cut short
Tray mountain

For the anything else yes. There has been heavy snow for this year so it has been sometimes quite hard to commute, even with an evoke. So maybe I just should blame this on hard weeks and just keep on training.

Well, I have just done it once but I’m thinking of doing it one time a week since there is a lot of snow this year in here. For this reason I’m planning on moving to lv plan.

I stopped at 318W so it would make it 238W.

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I wouldn’t drop my FTP all the way but if you failed Elephants +4 @ IF 0.89 but managed IF 0.85 sessions (Fang Mountain +1 & Carpathian Peak) I’d drop it a bit. At a rough guess it says your FTP is slightly lower than 270w but not significantly, try 265w and see how you get on. If it feels right forget about it till your next test; they are frequent enough :wink:

It doesn’t sound like the rest week was restful (bad sleep, skiing, DOMS). I’d do another easy/rest week, get back to 100%, and then retest. If you can’t make your old FTP of 270 so be it. Continue on training with the new FTP whatever it is.

People try to hold on for dear life with whatever FTP number they have put up. The number doesn’t always go up. Sometimes it comes down. We are in the middle of winter. FTP might be down doing a lot of base work and not having any race sharpness in the legs for a while.

FTP accuracy is +/- 10% (so I’ve read). Don’t get too married to the actual number. I know at 270, you are looking towards 300 but you might have a step back before you go up again.

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I would agree with all the other advice given by others.

If you’re failing multiple workouts, I would say drop your FTP ~5% and maybe restart the week with your most recent failed workout. If the 5% drop means you’re finishing the workouts, move forward with the plan. If you can’t, take a recovery week and really recover - try to avoid new sport and stick to the prescribed workouts. Then retest and go with the number you come out with, even if it is a significant drop.

Just retest and use the new number. If you are fatigued it will reflect in the test and affect your workouts. So just ride with the new tested number until you nail all workouts.

(This is a little off-topic, but Elephants +4 has fifteen minutes of 65% tacked onto it. You can’t assess the difficulty of a workout like that by the overall IF. The “work” part of the workout, 6x6 at 108% with 3-minute recoveries, is the same as Elephants +1 at IF 0.92. It’s a beast.)

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Listen to your legs and body- FTP tests can give wildly different results based on many factors. So I would reduce it by 5% and do some workouts and adjust on the fly. Better to make it an ongoing process rather than putting your number on just one test. You will know as you do the intervals whether your number is too high or low. Over unders quickly do that!

The OP is definitely not far off then if he’s getting into the territory of IF 0.92 :muscle::+1:

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The rest week was quite good. The skiing and Doms came after the rest week and ramptest.

Reading other comments on this thread I will do my Sunday and Tuesday workouts and if they feel too hard I will either retest or drop my ftp 5% or so.

I would not like to get another rest week since adjusting the plan builder like that is bit too trial and error.

There should be some kind of “sandbox” mode where you could play around with our calendar and plan and if everything is like you want you could overwrite your calendar plan.

Yes. The elephant +4 is really hard at the end of the work part.

Other thing is that I only have 1h time on tuesdays so it’s sometimes hard to figure out what ride to do when the plans give you 90min workouts.
Monadnock +4 has multiple versions of 60min workouts. Or I could do the +4 and just cut it short at 62min.