This thread talking about the timing of FTP changes made me think of the end of my last season.
TR recommended that I not increase my FTP during my specialty phase ahead of my A race. I took that recommendation and it makes sense. However, I extended that and left my FTP alone through my race date. With hindsight, I feel like my FTP probably decreased a little by race time. I felt especially this way with my taper. Due to this, I wonder if all my power targets for my race were built from an incorrect FTP. FWIW, power-wise, I felt good and similar to my training in my race.
What’s the right way to approach this? Should I re-check my FTP before the A Race? Should I do it before the taper but not the race? Does feeling good power-wise mean everything worked as it should?
Also, I updated my FTP two days before my specialty block started. Is that too close of an update before the specialty block?
I’m curious if there’s a generally accepted way to handle the timing of these updates leading up to race day and what other folk’s experiences have been with timing of FTP changes.
My specialty phase was 5 weeks with a recovery week in the 4th week, back to specialty phase in the 5th week, then my taper followed for the 3 weeks leading up to the race. My compliance suffered–54%–in the 6th (first taper week) of these 8 weeks due to a work event, but was otherwise okay.
Thanks in advance for any help or related experience you could share on any of these questions.
I generally do 7-9 weeks of specialty followed by a 2 week taper. 3 week taper seems long for me. (3-4 weeks on, 1 week off, 3-4 weeks on, 2 week taper)
But, My FTP gets updated prior to specialty, and then not again after that, with the exception being that I do one 20 minute 100% FTP interval (A “Threshold Check”) during the first week of taper where I can feel out what my threshold is that I want to use for race day pacing. If you think about it, this fits well into a taper anyways - drop volume, but maintain intensity so you want to do some hard stuff anyways.
I should caveat - I’ve been focusing on Leadville the last 3 years and this will be year 4. So at a very high level: February is VO2, March and April are Threshold Work, June and July are Specialty where I’m starting to push volume up and my intensity is mostly Tempo and Sweet Spot with a little bit of Threshold in, and I’m not losing FTP during those times - I’m gaining or staying constant while pushing out TTE. And, my taper is also at altitude so that 20 minute “threshold check” is also figuring out what my threshold is at 10,000’ elevation…
Thank you for sharing your experience! It sounds like you also reset FTP right before your Specialty block, but then you rechecked at the beginning of taper. I will likely do something like this next time but was wondering if I should do it closer to the race. Sounds like two weeks out / start of taper is a good option though.
My A race was Leadville too. I did TR’s Cross Country Marathon Mid Volume training plan with Adaptive Training.
I looked at my plan again, at the TSS TR prescribed each week and it looks like it had me doing a 2 week taper after all. My Actual TSS graph looks like a backward three week taper because of my missed workouts three weeks out, better compliance (122%) two weeks out, then the race TSS the final week.
Maybe the way I was feeling leading up to the race had to do with inconsistency and a little extra life stress. Now that I’ve been thinking about this more, I recall from swimming in the good ole days that I would sometimes feel less than great during my taper, but then feel great on race day. I hadn’t tapered in a long time!
I actually re-check maybe halfway through Taper. 8 Days out from the race. Because it’s Leadville, that gives me some time to acclimate at altitude, but I’m also more rested than right at the end of the block. It’s not a full test though - but once you’ve ridden enough threshold, you can tell and narrow in within 5 watts or so after about 15 minutes.
For Leadville, I’d change your race type from XCM to Gran Fondo - better profile for that race. And, I think in this case because of how long it is, I think it’s even more important to work on extending time in zone and doing a ton of sweet spot, tempo, and as much endurance as you can handle during your specialty and just leave your FTP set where it was at the end of build.
Very dependent on the race I’d say. Take Leadville - there’s one climb that’s 90 minutes long that you could drive all the way to the top, and plenty of others where it’s a benefit being able to use a certain wattage as a “Speed Limit” - especially early in the day and at altitude.
Singletrack race - I agree in that case and rarely even look at my head unit.
This makes sense for me when I do XCO and cyclocross, but I’ve struggled to not overdo my pace in the first few hours of longer events, so having a power number to reference is helpful to me in those situations. I’m only a few races in on really trying to focus on a steady power target in the longer events and it’s still tough to keep a lid on the the effort though.
But I think in some scenarios, there’s a pretty small percentage of people that can rely on pacing by RPE (especially when you add in altitude) and this is/would be a huge benefit. Especially when you’re talking about a lot of longer steady-state TT like efforts.
Every year I’ve done it I’ve literally watched hundreds of people go out WAY WAY too hard and set themselves up for a colossal collapse later in the race at Leadville. Putting a simple power “speed limit” for the climbs is a big help in that case.
