If you want to do the test in Zwift, I highly recommend selecting the Watopia > Tempus Fugit route. It’s and out and back on as about as flat as it gets terrain. I think like 16m of elevation gain over the 17km loop. Settle into your gear/wattage and just spin!
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I was just wondering if anyone had any experience of over testing with this protocol? I did it at the weekend (Alex Gold, Prog 1 - Thank you!). Did 35 mins at average 329, which feels possibly a bit high, so was thinking of training at 320, but could just be being a wimp at the thought of the tougher workouts at the higher ftp. Any thoughts?
I find it hard to believe you can really overtest with this if you make it to the ramp up part. No reason you can’t now use this number to do 2x20 or 3x20.
You’ll be fine. It will hurt, but you will be fine.
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I did 40 min at 307 W and set FTP at 305 W just to have a round number (and because it wasn’t an hour test). My first ftp workout was 4 x 10’ and it felt tough. But I was doing only SS for the last 3-4 months. Since then I progressed to 3 x 16’ and if the weather gets worse I’ll do 3 x 20 (can’t do outside, don’t have that much road). It is tough but it is supposed to be. I am not dying during the intervals but I don’t feel like increasing the difficulty either 
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Thanks for the advice, time to embrace the pain!
35min is kinda a low TTE but that just means you start your progressions at shorter/lower TiZ. So start w/ 3x10 and target to get to something like 3x20/4x15 by the end of a 3-4 week progression.
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With 35 min TTE 3x10 is a little bit short (it is shorter than TTE and when you include breaks and regeneration it is something similar to 20-25 of continuous threshold work - with 35 TTE 3x15 is perfectly doable workout. And with progression - be brutal. If you can do 3x15 so in the next workout (in the same week) go with 2x20. If you can do this - add more TiZ. It is amazing how fast your body adapts to this type of workouts. In 2-3 weeks you will be able to do 1x60 
And go just a tad short of your ftp - 95-97%. You will have the same adaptations but it is a little easier to recover.
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Go with 320 it is in range of power meter error and with a little bit lower value you can spend more TiZ with the same adaptations like with 329 but without fear of going constantly over FTP during these longer efforts. So 320 and threshold workouts at 100÷ FTP. This is only my personal opinion based Kolie Moore podcasts.
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Thanks! Did some over-unders this morning based on 325 and felt about right (*== fairly unpleasant 
). Agree with being conservative and focusing on tiz as am planning a sweetspot progression at 90%, with intervals out to an hr, plus a over under progression out to 3 x 20.
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If you make it to the end of a progression, whether it be the baseline or progressions 1 and 2 - they all look to be under 60 minutes at least based on TR custom created workouts - the average is supposed to your FTP correct? Doesn’t this fly against the fact that FTP has been defined as 1 hour maximal power? In other words, your result from this protocol would be less in theory than if you had attempted a 1 hour max TT?
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FTP isn’t hour power. It’s the power that you can sustain for an extended period of time, generally 35-75 minutes.
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Thanks. What I can sustain for 35 minutes is at least 10-15w higher than 70 minutes let alone 75 minutes as you state ftp can be a measure of. Given this vague definition of what ftp is, I don’t understand how varying durations of different progressions can all be an equally valid assessment of ftp?
What power can you hold for 35 minutes?
If you read the descriptions of the different progressions, they all contain “OR TTE” – Time to Exhaustion.
You can do a 20min test and call that your FTP or you can go until you’re exhausted and call that your FTP.
Read Kolie’s article again, esp the section about the physiology of FTP. Then read this article which explains TTE (and more about FTP).
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I agree, I thought to ‘prove’ TTE the workouts needed to be longer, and have added variations to progression 1 and 2 with ‘longer mid’ variations that will take the total time to 50-55 minutes. If you can survive longer you’ll either have to edit them or use resistance mode and just keep riding
These workout/testing variants are awesome, thank you so much Alex!
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After listening to the @empiricalcycling podcast a while ago, reading this entire thread, and doing my own research, I finally decided to give the test a go this week.
Background - 27 year old male, 158 pounds. Collegiate middle-distance runner (4:11/14:54 mile/5k) who started training for tris in 2018. Did two 70.3s last season and then spent the winner just riding the trainer. Picked running back up a month ago hoping to do Maine 70.3 in August… not looking promising at this point.
Pre-Test - Finished General Build Mid-Volume and went right into HIM Base High Volume (no swimming). Did the week 4 rest week and then did the threshold test on Tuesday. My last ramp test was four weeks ago and I got 356W (4.98 W/kg… so frustratingly close to my winter goal of 5.0) on the road bike, but I decided to switch to the TT bike for this and started riding that two weeks ago. My highest ever FTP result on the TT bike was 324W last July, but after a long winter, I knew my power was up so I figured 345W was a reasonable drop off from the road bike numbers. I went with a longer version of progression 1, with 10’ at 95% into 30’ at 100% of target FTP before a ramp at the end.
The Test - I knew pretty quickly that I was too ambitious with my target. After a few minutes, I could feel in my legs that I bit off more than I could chew, and lowered the target FTP. This trend continued a bit over the course of the test, and I found what ‘felt’ like FTP around 332-336W. I cranked my tunes, grinded out the test, and ended up averaging 335W for just over 42 minutes of the testing duration. This is below my original target of 345W for sure, but I am pretty happy with it. For the first time after a test, I feel like it was an honest assessment of my FTP. No correction factors needed, just me grinding in the saddle for an extended period of time. This still puts me 11W over my best ever test on the tri bike, which was leading up to the biggest race of my career (70.3 Worlds in Nice).
This was already pretty long (sorry), but I’ve got an even longer-form post about this test and my running CP test the next day on my blog if anyone is interested (shameless plug).
Now onto getting that curve shifted to the right! I’m okay with the FTP number for now but want to bump up that TTE!
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I did Progression 1 at the beginning of this week, and whilst I managed to get to the 40 minute mark, it was very challenging - surprised to be within a few % of my ramp test result from the beginning of the previous block but not reading much into it as different metrics describing different things.
The one takeaway I would share is the impact on recovery and subsequent training. The test wiped me out completely. 4 days later and I felt just about good enough to do Palisade. I know it’s n=1 but just might be worth considering as part of planning your training.
Interesting, because after this test I am lot fresher than after ramp test. I recover a lot faster from this - one easier ride the day after is enough to do another hard workout.
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Sounds like your 40 minutes could have been above threshold, or you should look at your recovery routine. This is not a post-test fatigue level I’ve seen with anyone yet.
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