I don’t have a smart trainer so not even an option for me even if I wanted to!
Thank you for posting this, I’ve been wanting to say the same. I did my first long test almost 3.5 years ago, before buying an indoor trainer or using WKO or Xert or TrainerRoad.
For anyone that prefers the trainer to riding outside - my suggestion is to consider loading up Zwift and just go out and ride hard like Erick posted above. Or use TrainerRoad and turn off Erg.
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I’ve long shared the same point of view. I started on a dumb trainer and am now on a smart trainer. I find that with ERG I don’t have to “try” as hard. Maybe it’s psychological, but I did find benefits in riding in resistance or slope mode. Really having to pay attention to all sensations. Even made a thread here a while back and got destroyed by the ERG crowd.
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I’ve read and re-read most of this thread and it’s a long thread so hopefully someone can help me with trying to determine my FTP from doing the baseline test today. This is the one posted in the Team Gold team forum.
I did the test in resistance mode (level 3). After doing a warmup and calibration in another custom workout, I got through the first 20 minutes of the warmup in the test without any issues other than adjusting to resistance mode/gears and had a pretty good handle on what to do.
The first 10 minute interval had a target of 96% of current FTP so I stayed in that range - no problem other than adding to fatigue, etc. The next 15 minute interval had a target of 102% of current FTP and that’s where I paced myself on what I could (kinda, sorta) hold, which was above the 102% and more in the 105%+ power range. The issue I had was that by the end of that 15 minutes, I was pretty gassed and my cranky arthritic knees were barking at me, so after a few seconds in the ramp that started in the next interval, I pulled the plug.
Sooooo … did I go far enough to determine my FTP? If so, what section(s) do I look at? The 10 and 15 minute intervals? The 15 minute interval only? I’m pretty sure it can’t be the average for the whole test since there are recovery valleys.
Thanks for the help. 
without looking back at the article, I believe that puts you at 207W and TTE of 25:30.
For anyone that wants to take a look here it is: Log In to TrainerRoad
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Thanks.
The test reminds me of the 20 minute TR test, but a little less taxing afterward. Or I’m just better at recovery now.
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I don’t think 25 minutes is long enough for it to be a valid test? That’s barely longer than a 20 minute test, for which you’d do the blowout efforts first and then still multiply average power by 0.95 to get “FTP”. I’m pretty sure the minimum TTE you should be looking at is 35 minutes. If it was me, I’d try the test again, aim a little lower at the start and stay on target until the ramp.
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If you used the workout from the Gold team, in my understanding it is not going off your current ftp, but is factoring in that you want an increase. It already starts close to your current ftp, and then goes above it. So if you increased target power over the demand power, you were actually quite a bit over ftp, which is probably why you didn’t last long.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to try again in a couple of weeks hoping the first time experience with the test will help. In the meantime, I’m going to try to stick with workouts in resistance mode instead of ERG to help get a better feel for how to use that mode instead of ERG.
Somewhere in the thread I think someone (forget who) mentioned doing the baseline test a few times before making progress. That’s what I’m hoping to do as well.
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The target was showing watts based on my current FTP. I think my biggest issue was trying to get in gear that wasn’t too far over the target which would allow better pacing at the beginning.
Here is @alexgold123’s initial post about this. There are a few more variants in the team now I think, so it might be that you did a different one, but if you read up from post 82 in this thread, there’s a discussion about this.
I do think though that ideally you wouldn’t follow a workout for this test, but just ride by feel.
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In defence of erg mode
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There is an increase / reduce intensity button. This can be used to find the right level in the opening 15-20 minutes.
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If you’re in manual mode, there’s every possibility that you can - even subconsciously - slacken off a little as things get hard and you approach your TTE. So as fatigue sets in and your HR starts to rise, you could easily drop a few watts and it gives you a longer TTE and lower threshold.
(Obviously if you’re clearly overshooting after 15 minutes then I’d say it’s OK to bring the power down. But if you’ve got to 30 minutes then whatever power you’ve done so far you need to keep holding until exhaustion or it’s not a valid test.)
FWIW, here’s the test I did earlier. Started at 265, jumped up to 273, but after a few minutes it became clear that this was a little high, so knocked it down a notch, then held that until 5 minutes into the ramp for an FTP of 269 and TTE of 45 minutes.
I’m not totally sure this represents the best of my ability, as I’ve done 94% of this power for 90 minutes recently on the turbo. Also I didn’t really had any significant rest or recovery before the test. But I think it’s a good marker and provides some useful benchmarks for future tests.
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I think that’s fair.
I feel like if you’re following the prescription in the TP article, then I’d question whether the test is truly done to feel as people are saying anyway. Riding at 95% and then after 10 mins 100% of target FTP isn’t “feeling” your FTP - it’s following a target.
Just as you did, one can respond to the sensations and adjust the power up or down in ERG pretty much as incrementally as in Resistance mode - I don’t think I’ve seen this point be addressed.
It feels almost like snobbery in some quarters if you choose to do this assessment in ERG, or if you even use a workout to give you a loose visual guideline to follow. I do think there’s something to be said for those that jump into this workout without understanding the intention, and execute the assessment wrong because of how someone has created the workout in TR.
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Yes. I think my main objection is that although you can probably start to tell by feel, breathing, HR etc when you’re at threshold, the whole point of TTE is that at some point it won’t feel like threshold anymore. Which is why holding that power for me is an important part of the test.
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Anyhow, here’s my effort from today’s WFH lunch break.
From having recently done a progression of 2x20@100%, 3x15@100%, 3x20@97%, 2x30@98%, 1x50@98% as well as a couple of TR O/U workouts along the way, I was fairly confident my FTP setting (350w) was close to accurate. My objective was just to sense check this, as I hadn’t done so for quite a while. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t subconsciously being too lazy or going too hard, as well as getting a good workout in.
I set a target of 2-3w increase cos, well, we all want a higher number, and a couple of watts wasn’t going to throw me too far off course! In ERG I reduced the main block slightly throughout to stick to my target. By chance I landed at 352w and 45 mins. I agree with what’s been said already - I feel pretty fresh coming out of that - only the last 2ish mins really started biting with a fairly quick drop in cadence. Will stick with this methodology for future assessments, although I’ll probably make my own version in workout creator, so the only adjustment I need to do is set my FTP to target in settings prior. Also I’d probably get rid of the VO2 max intervals from the warm up and extend time at threshold/upper SST.
Questions for the experts:
- Given my previous workouts exceed this 45 min TTE (albeit at c.97%), how would you proceed with my progression? I did today’s workout in place of a 1x60, which I’m confident I could’ve hit if the workout didn’t exceed threshold.
- I’d guess it’s barely worth actually updating over 2w owing to margin for error etc, or should I squeeze those last couple of watts out where I can?
- Given I got reasonably far into the ramp, I think I should extend time at 100% of target next time (e.g. aim for 30 mins instead of 20) before moving onto the next progression. Thoughts?
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In the linked FTP Training Thread, I recently posed a similar question while outlining a proposed FTP progression based upon a 50-minute TTE. While it may or may not be advisable, Kolie Moore did chime in and indicate it at least wasn’t totally crazy. As I understand it from his podcast, one of the best ways to extend TTE and/or raise FTP is, surprise surprise, to ride at FTP and extend TTE. Perhaps you could build a similar progression based upon your (much higher than mine) FTP and TTE. As far as riding at 100%, my understanding (again from Moore’s podcast) is that the adaptation from being slightly below FTP is about the same as being at FTP. Therefore, I’m not sure it’s quite as crucial to ride “right at” FTP, versus riding close, but not over, FTP.
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I think the proof is in the pudding to be fair. As I’ve demonstrated I can handle 60 mins of work, I guess I’ll continue to do so, as 3x sessions p/w at around 97% don’t leave me wiped out. I think if I’d extended the time at 100% (pre-ramp), I could’ve gone longer and my TTE output from the test would be higher and more accurate.
As for next steps, my thoughts are to start tentatively mixing in some O/Us to the 60 min sessions, and start tentatively pushing out duration of of flat 97% sessions starting ‘easy’ e.g. 7x10 then 5x15. @jarsson probably has some workouts I can copy 
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I did 4x 12 minutes at 98% of FTP rbi 3’, last week,
TTE was 45m12s,
TiZ for session was 48 minutes (just over as each 12 minutes was a few seconds extra.)
WKO5 after the session was uploaded added 13 seconds to my TTE.
Thanks. The one I did was the baseline that Alex created. I looked it over quite a bit before doing it to get an idea of what to expect. If I go by the first 10 minutes of the 102% interval, then my new FTP is higher than if I include the 98% interval. If I go by the last 10 minutes of the 102% interval, then my new FTP would be even higher. It wasn’t clear to me, so that’s why I asked for help. Anyway, I appreciate the feedback.
My ftp is a only 224, but for me on the baseline test it’s almost 5 minutes between 221 and 222 and 223 and 224 in erg mode. I am really confident that if I think I could have squeezed one or two more watts out I AM WRONG.
You can check this yourself by dragging your interval from the start to the end of the test section, seeing your avg watts and then backing off on the end until you see avg watts go down by 1, then do it one more time to see how long it took to go from 222 → 223 in my case.
I imagine resistance mode would be very similar.