It's been a great year but this forum has me thinking about sustainable power...a lot

Congrats on the results. For my DK200 training this year (which got derailled a bit at the end due to a cold), I just did longer and longer intervals at the highest level i could. So starting two months before, I did 15 min SS, then some 8 min threshold, then 20 min SS, moving to 45 min SS (2x…that was brutal) and eventually 60 min right about threshold.

So I would echo the comments of longer SS, long temp, and really work up to being able to do 60 min threshold.

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This has been part of my training plan also - I’ve done up to 3 hrs on a turbo. The third hour is physically and mentally a struggle. But my overall Marathon pace is going up.

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So in a little under a month of doing Polar Bear +1 on a weekly basis I’ve been able to increase time at sweet spot by ~14%. Bascially by adding a few seconds to each interval every so often.

Each time I compare Sweet Spot interval 2 to Sweet Spot interval 21 to see what the heart rate drift is through the workout. First time I did Polar Bear +1 drift was 9%. The last time I did Polar Bear +1 +an extra 15 minutes of SS work drift was 3.8%. That’s a lot more improvement than I expected to see in such a short time. Especially from what was (for me) a fairly trained condition.

Probably more objective evidence that I really needed to work on sustainability!

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Great job, @Brennus !

Here’s the intervals.icu cardiac drift analysis…same as my caveman calculation…

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Cool, how do you access that chart?

Click on Activities, select an Activity. You should see ‘Activity Power’ appear in the left hand menu. Click on Activity Power. Scroll down to the bottom of the page & you’ll see the cardiac drift charts.

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Much appreciated :smiley:

I hate doing sustained efforts on the trainer like 2x20s. I’ll do them in the winter. But once it’s nice out, I get back to doing 4-6 hour rides with lots and lots of climbing. A lot of climbing at a 3x20 effort/pace. Long days in the saddle. Long days at tempo. I felt pretty damn good at steamboat gravel and I can’t remember the last time I did 2x20s.

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SUCCESS!

After 5 weeks working on extended sessions riding at 80% to 90% of ‘FTP’ I took another ramp test which placed my MAP-based ‘FTP’ at 293W. Two days later I attempted the Hour of Power again.

In case you did not follow the thread, I attempted the Hour of Power back in March. At that time my most proximal TR MAP-based ‘FTP’ was 296…determined by ramp test w/in 12 days of the Hour of Power attempt. So, essentially the same MAP-based ‘FTP’ as today. Maybe a little better in March.

At the time I was doing Sustained Power Build.

Back in March I was able to hold 279W for ~27 minutes before I blew up…this at a TR MAP-base ‘FTP’ of 296. This morning I was able to hold 281W for ~43 minutes before I just figured I had proved my point and bagged the workout. Could have done more for sure.

So at a 1% lower ‘FTP’ I was able to pedal at a 1% higher power for 60% longer, at least.

Here is what I think is going on: TR uses (primarily) a MAP ramp test to determine FTP. Most would perceive all TR plans to be FTP based but they are not. They are Maximum Aerobic Power based & the first thing you do with your Maximum Aerobic Power is multiply it by 0.75 to get your ‘FTP’. So, really, all training plans are based on 0.75*MAP…not FTP.

Here is the problem with that MAP-derived FTP number: if you compare the actual FTP to the actual MAP of a population of riders with similar MAP you get a BROAD distribution. Remember that paper from way back in the day by Coyle and Coggan where they did exactly that? Determined FTP as a percentage of VO2Max for a bunch of trained cyclists? Some of them were 60% & some of them were 85%. A lot of them were less than 75%.

TR has no way to deal with those riders who have sub ~70% FTP. And in fact, at least for the sustained power build plan, TR puts those riders into a destructive positive-feedback loop. Imagine our trained cyclist who has an FTP that is 60% of their VO2Max. TR uses a ramp test to estimate VO2max, then assigns an estimated FTP of 75%*VO2Max.

Yikes! Our 60% rider’s next workout is Avalanche Spire! The poor fellow is doing over/unders at (nominally) ~118% of his true FTP. That’s a VO2Max workout. So he slogs it out. Does what he can. It’s a super tough workout…maybe he can’t complete it all. People on the forum tell him it should be ‘hard but doable’. Especially those riders who are lucky enough to be in the >80% FTP-to-VO2Max club.

Our 60% rider is one tough cookie. He hammers through workouts as best he can. Then, when it comes time to do the next ramp test, guess what? He hasn’t been doing sustained power for the past few weeks AT ALL. He’s been doing a ton of VO2max work. Guess what that does to your Maximum Aerobic Power? It makes it better…so now his next ramp test…surprise, surprise…is a little bit better.

But his FTP probably hasn’t improved that much.

That’s what I think was going on with me. My physiologic profile favored Maximum Aerobic Power. As a result my MAP test results caused 75% of MAP to overestimate my FTP. So when I executed a TR workout at 95% of TR-ramp-test-derived FTP…I as really doing intervals at >110% of true FTP.

But, good news! There is a solution!

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I’m at the other end of the distribution - ftp is often at 86-90% of vo2max by my estimates.

@bbarrera, what’s your training strategy? Do you still just hammer at around FTP or do you concentrate on raising VO2max so you have more room to increase FTP?

Going forward I’m going to pay more attention to vo2max work. Looking at the past, my biggest ftp gains have come from outside training blocks with a lot of vo2 work. Basic strategy will be to lay down a solid foundation (aerobic + longer and longer sweet spot), and then spend a lot of time doing vo2 work.

You should be able to rack up some positive results fairly quickly. Seems like VO2Max training produces adaptation a lot faster than SS or FTP work.

Which side of the line are you on…do you find VO2max work to be fairly easy or are those types of workouts a real challenge for you?

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Seems like you would benefit a great deal by some good ol’ Fashioned V02 blocks.

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Always a challenge. Sweet spot on the other hand is easy.

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I think you are correct. I’ve felt better about making progress manually adjusting my FTP of late. Everyone has their own version of the FTP test and in general the trend is to go as short as possible. Pretty soon someone will be doing a 5 minute test they feel derives an accurate result in their population sample data. The desire is to make the test as easy on the subject as possible in terms of recovery time required so people can test quickly, easily and often. Accuracy is not necessarily relevant as long as you are repeating the same testing methodology every test. That’s the line anyway. You make a great case for why the short version of the test isn’t necessarily accurate and the perils of taking shortcuts.

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For a lot of people it’s an ego thing and people like saying they have a high number when in reality they couldn’t hold ftp for 30 minutes let along any longer.

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I just listened to an interesting podcast about the benefits of endurance / zone 2 training in helping boost the long tail in the power curve (1hr +). The goal according to the coach in the “Finding Your Athletic Potential With Steve Neal” podcast, is to use endurance training to increase our contribution of energy from fat. This falls in-line with the polarized model of training. In the podcast, zone-based training is discussed at 37:30 and endurance workouts is discussed at 46:00.

I don’t have any experience with these types of endurance rides. Instead of long/slow distance rides, I always try to stay in the tempo/sweet-spot range, but I am tempted to add in one of these types of rides into my weekly training schedule.

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I’m going to do traditional base 1, 2, and 3, and then do a 9-week vo2max intervention before going into a TR build plan.