I created a variation of the test as I like to use ERG mode and I don’t like estimating my ftp. The test ramps from 97% to 100% of my previous ftp over 5 mins then stays at 100% ftp for 25 mins before ramping up to 108% over 10 mins. I adjust the intensity based on feel during the 25 minute block i.e. in my last test I increased to 101% after a few minutes then upped it to 102% and then settled on 103%. I just about held on for the 40 mins although the last minute was pretty tough. I ended up with a 6 watt improvement, which seems about right.
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My plan next week is to do the Baseline test at 5% under my current TR Ramp test result, and see how that goes. Then I’ll do Progression 1 using the average from that and see what my TTE is.
Based on the above I don’t need any rest going into either of them?
Just out of interest, Are people doing these tests in ERG or resistance?
I Tried on Saturday (Prog 1, Alex Gold’s TR workout) with ERG, got about 20 minutes in and the trainer just dialled me down to 40 rpm, had to pause, swap to resistance, and manually calibrate after that, so will give it another shot tommorow.
Be interesting to hear how people are doing it!
Started with erg but currently doing it in resistance. It is way easier this way - you can do micro-brakes, by lowering the power couple of watts and also push more watts if you have significant FTP bump. So resistance/level mode is the way.
I did it yesterday because I wanted a longer test to do outside, but of course it rained so I had to stay indoors in my hot and humid pain cave 
I chose progression 1 with a longer middle because the 271 watts FTP was the result of a Ramp Test I did Saturday, which was pretty disappointing since my previous FTP was 282 watts and I’m in the middle of SPB MV.
So I thought that maybe Saturday was just a bad day and that yesterday I could have increased my FTP a bit with this test, however I was wrong and I should have done the normal progression 1 since in this one I quit at the end of the middle section.
In the end the result is 273 watts for 41 minutes, so I’ll keep 271 as my FTP because I think my TTE is slightly longer.
Moreover I’ll go back to base since something went definitely wrong in build and my objective was to improve FTP, not decreasing it. 
Anyway I’ll stick with this test because I liked it and my goals for this year should have been climbing races and time trials, so it fits perfectly with my riding style.
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How much high power work have you been doing recently? Also, what kind of rider are you? Sprinter, TT’er, etc?
Hi, thanks for you interest! I’ll try to keep it short.
I did the first half of Sustained Power Build MV from April 14th, after doing SSB1 and 2 both MV but with added Z2 volume. My FTP at the beginning of base was 260 because I had been sick for three weeks before that, then 276 at the start of SSB2 and 282 at the end of it.
Although I have to say that build didn’t go perfectly, especially the Saturday’s workouts since I failed Red Lake +8 at the fourth interval, Raymond +7 halfway through the last interval and the following week I tried Raymond +7 again but I had to quit in the second interval. They all felt incredibly hard and they made me think that I over-tested my FTP, however all the other workouts including the over-unders went great.
Then, since I was allowed to ride outside again, I rode without structure for a week, mainly Z2 including a long ride of 5 hours and another one of 4 hours where I did one hour at 260 watts on a climb and it felt like SweetSpot.
After that I did a shortened version of the first SPB recovery week because I didn’t feel much fatigued, then I tested on Saturday and I did a 3 hours easy ride on Sunday.
I also track my fitness, fatigue and form using intervals.icu and during build I was always in the grey zone. Here is my graph:
About what kind of rider I am, I’d say I’m a “Rolling Road Race” kind of rider because I’ve always ridden on this sort of terrain and also last year I focused on those type of races and I did fairly well. However I really like to ride long climbs and my w/kg is a bit better than my absolute power, so this year I wanted to focus on improving it and my TTE.
Any increase in TTE at SS/FTP power? I.e., have you moved the power duration curve to the right, instead of up?
Not much since I followed the plans and there aren’t really long SS or FTP intervals. Although I did a ride on Zwift at the beginning of April, when my FTP was 276 watts, where I did 250w for one hour and fifty minutes, which really surprised me. Then the hour at 260w that I mentioned in the other post and yesterday’s test definitely moved the curve to the right.
Same power meter on the bike outside and inside?
No, outside I have a spider based power meter and indoors I use an Elite Drivo I with another bike. That’s also why I wanted to test outside yesterday.
However I used both together for a couple of workouts and the spider based read about 2% higher than the Drivo.
Hmmm - getting to the nub of your issue (i.e., a perceived FTP decrease), I wouldn’t base too much off a single day test. Moreover, I wouldn’t get too hung up on an apparent decrease. I would keep going with the plan, keen an eye on compliance (if drops, then really investigate).
Don’t focus on a single workout/or even week - keep going to identify a longer term trend (i.e., don’t focus on the tree, but the wood)!
Thank you for the advice! I’ll go back to base since I’m not actually training for an event due to this situation and I’ll try to focus on long term goals like improving endurance, TTE and eventually FTP.
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It has been a while.
Update on my cycling experience with Coach Kolie.
Going great!
I really had no idea that I could handle 10-13 hour weeks but I have been acing workouts with flying colors.
Having a coach is motivating and confidence boosting. I highly recommend it. My favorite ride prescription is the “non-steady tempo fun ride”
It’s been good for me to learn how to do outside workouts. TR outside workouts, IDK, I gave them a bit of a try but i think that they aren’t as good or doable as the prescriptions that Kolie gives. I think the main thing is that his prescriptions that include recommendations for what kind of roads to seek out, and how to ride them in the real world. He also has an understanding that you need to push your limits sometimes which TR never does.
I don’t think TR has even one workout where they tell you to go as hard as you possibly can right? Now coming to think of it, that is pretty weird right?
TR should consider adding personal coaching as a big up-sell. 
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Gave this a try Monday after reading about it awhile back after trying some other new stuff since March and the pandemic. A bit of context first. I’m 79, only cycling at all less than 20 years, never competitively, so in it for max health and fitnesse, not max performance (TR’s mission). Nevertheless a TR loyalist since 2016 because its whole ecosystem has meant so much to my geezer well being. My guess is that my “true” FTP has oscillated pretty closely around 170 for those 4 years. Very first FTP test (2x8 on a brand new uncalibrated Kinetic that came with a free TR month!) gave me 180, likely inflated, but how could I know? As I got older and gadgets more accurate, this settled down to said 170. (I know my performance has in fact much improved since then simply because the outdoor data shows me going faster or higher for longer on rides that I just couldn’t finish at all when I started paying attention, despite a static FTP on tests, so I’m not as discouraged by the number itself as I would have been when younger.) A TR ramp test in the middle of the familiar SSBI added insult to injury when my Direto (in Erg) and the TR app stopped talking to each other right at Minute 17, so the trainer wouldn’t ramp up resistance right when it’s essential for that test – later explained as intermittent dropouts. I just put myself at 170 – based on the feel of preceding workouts, the last ramp, and apprehension of getting a rude awakening if I set it higher. But no way I was going to ramp again, at least not in erg if I couldn’t trust the devices to hang in with me!
Then came COVID, which for me put a build phase on hold, with the scares of high-intensity trashing our immune systems, as if my age wasn’t risk enough. Mostly played at home, including revisiting Zwift (not a real fan), and in late April tried out nothing but longer low-intensity rides (see MAF Method) out of curiosity for 5 weeks. Interesting experience, though I don’t buy into some of the rationale. I also wanted to put some intensity back into the mix, maybe a polarized combo, but indecisive about exactly what and when. Ran across this thread, read the @empiricalcycling pitch, used Workout Creator to duplicate the Baseline version described by @bbarrera, but doing Davis separately as the warmup.
I worried a lot about it before doing it. First, because I hadn’t done even a complete minute of threshold for 5 weeks, deliberately. Second, because even before the Z2-only experiment, I rarely if ever did threshold efforts for longer than 8 or 10 minutes. I feared a “real FTP test” – actual intensity over an actual duration, instead of a calculation derived from that short bipolar experience we know as the ramp test (“I got this! No prob!” followed 10 minutes later by “Call 911! I’m dying!”) – would unmask even my measly 170 as an imposture, although I sort of welcomed that too, if it landed me in reality. Attractive: it was said to give people the felt experience of riding at one of their own body’s actual physiological thresholds. Having spent weeks tuning into that lower aerobic threshold I was curious whether I could get the feel of this second one. Still apprehensive that I might bail 10 minutes in.
Needless inner drama in anticipation of a pretty ordinary result:
It put me to the watt at the same FTP as working ramp test probably would have, and as the eFTP over at intervals.icu which I just discovered. Far short of an hour of power, but longer before I folded than I had feared. That steep curl at the end even amuses me. Outdoors if my body wants to Get This Over With Now! but my pride is determined to Get There! the solution is pretty natural: go harder, because then it’ll be over sooner. In the blue hills of TrainerWorld, where time not distance is the x-axis I need to Hang In There. I had Zwift going for visual distraction (not control of the trainer), so in the test’s endgame, where power should SLOWLY ramp up (as IQ is rapidly going down), I got suckered into the race-to-the-stop-sign, and gave it my all. Very briefly. 
I think this “test” did give me what it promised and what I wanted – what riding steadily at this threshold feels like internally, sort of an uncomfortable version of finding the groove in music. I can even see some adjustment going on in the middle of the 2nd 15 minutes – when the urge to get it over sooner by going harder ran into an uh-oh feeling that I’d never make it at all if I did and made me settle back into a more sustainable groove. I guess the real test of that internalization would be to do it blind, but at least I did get the feeling of hanging in on an edge for longer than I thought I could.
So now that I’ve experimented and believe more in this number as a way to scale stuff, the question is still what kind of intensity to add as the weather turns glorious. One result of this test that surprised me was that my FTP as measured almost right at threshold didn’t drop at all, even though I’d done only Z2 riding for 5 weeks by design – excepting the odd kick here or there for safety or social distance – virtually nothing in the zone that the test measured. Looking at this test and my riding habits in summer, the obvious thing seems to be to extend duration at a given intensity rather than increase intensity. But I do sort of enjoy the spice VO2 max workouts when the intervals are short. I’m talking myself into some DIY polarization (still keeping my TR subscription of course), especially if I can do a lot of enjoyable Z2 sightseeing outdoors, a little indoor VO2 max pepper on rainy days, if that combo would actually magically extend the durations I can do at intermediate intensities. Or do I have to consistently do long SS workouts, for instance, to extend SS duration? All I know is that I didn’t at least lose FTP by dropping all intensity for 5 weeks but almost doubling volume.
Well, that’s not the topic of this thread, but it’s an interesting question for me. How to lose the least fitness and have the most fun . . . . safely.
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Similar experience working with a different coach’s stock plan. I’ve done 2 different companies stock plans outside, and have come to believe there is a significant difference between a plan optimized for the trainer (TR) and a plan optimized for doing outside. Both have a place, and someone may favor one over the other depending on their situation.
TrainerRoad has nailed indoor training IMHO. There is some real gold in Coach Chad’s workout instructions. I convinced a former spin instructor to try TrainerRoad, she absolutely loves the workout instructions and actually gets pissed off when doing a workout without instructions! Serious props to Coach Chad to be sure.
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Interesting read - thanks!
40 minutes over threshold isn’t hard to do if your TTE is longer than 40 minutes. One of my guys with an 80 minute TTE at 330w does his 40 minute TTs at around 350w. And if we do FTP work in the 350w range, the workouts are really hard. But he can do the same workout block doing 90 minutes of intervals around 330w no problem. It’s a pretty critical difference to understand.
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Would you prescribe that athlete 40min at 350w? Or shorter intervals but more of them at 350w?
Spending 40min straight above ftp sounds awful.
OK, so if this is the case… how do you know when you’re in the middle of the test, whether you’re testing your FTP power right up to your TTE, or you’re going slightly over your threshold so going to fall short?
Especially if the time you achieve is a plausible TTE.
(and conversely, how do you know - assuming lactate testing isn’t an option - if a performance like this is at, and not under, FTP?)
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