What you describe sounds similar to what I’ve been doing. I don’t know if that’s the right path for you, I barely know what I’m doing.
VO2 is tricky. At that intensity it’s hard to look at numbers to moderate effort level. I don’t think 120% of something works for me; it can easily be too hard or too easy. I found outdoor efforts were effective. 6 x 3min, and go as hard as you can. Riding your bike outdoors is nowhere near as mentally taxing as being pinned to a specific number of watts whilst counting down the seconds of sufferance.
Breathing is another important cue to whether I’m in the right zone. Sweetspot is a bit above the point where talking starts to become difficult whilst endurance is where I can talk comfortably.
I’m trying to keep my workouts to be a sub-set of what TR prescribes so that I can better compare performance over time. My hope is that I will see more watts for the same number of beats. E.g, Truuli is always the first workout I do following a vacation. Not only is it a good workout for preparing my body prior to a block of training but it gives me a great indication of whether I’ve detrained or if I’ve had some positive adaptations or if I’ve recovered from the travel. Likewise, Wright Peak -2 is a sweetspot workout I do on a regular basis. My HR should be around 150 for each of the efforts so that I can compare avg. watts. All this means I don’t need to rely exclusively on an assessment to determine progress.
RestingHR can sometimes explain poor performance or elevated RPE. I monitor my restingHR on a daily basis and will update my training notes if I see anything unexpected.
I’ve been doing a zone 2 block after finishing up Century Specialty build early summer. I have seen my power increase 15 watts for the same pulse. One other thing that I’ve noted is that my pulse goes higher before I reach VT1 subjectively. Currently doing 3 x 2 hr isopower workouts/week with one group ride which is the usual hammerfest. I often tack on another hr of zone 2 after the group ride.
Care to share a short synpsis of the podcast @mcneese.chad?
Dying in VO2 workout (at HIGH rpm 
) so it could be a while. Besides, I have about the worst grasp on these topics and would probably screw it up 
Hoping one of the smart guys can do it better than I could dream.
Synopsis: start low & ramp slow. And no ERG.
Now go listen. 
Binary search for the win 
And no ERG.
I always disagree with that advice, it assumes that the power target is locked in. You can easily fine tune the target wattage based on feel as you go, and I’d say you can fine tune more effectively than if you are jumping up and down gears.
Rather Progression 3 from the KM tests for the riders that exactly know where their FTP is. If you do not know from training where you FTP is - the progression 1 is fine.
If you use WKO and your PDC od properly filled - go hard for 30 minutes and it will be enough.
Something tells me that @Captain_Doughnutman can be eager to try the ERG mode approach
As much as I am a fan of ERG, I like KM’s reasons behind using Resistance for his tests.
As far as subtle tweaks go, you can use TR to make fine changes via the Resistance percentage setting. I did this all the time when I did the 20m FTP test. You can really dial in the Resistance level and even avoid shifting altogether, if that is preferable.
Mist admit I didn’t really get much out of that latest podcast, nothing real actionable anyway. I don’t have smart trainer soe e.g irrelevant for me anyway!
I did like that episode, especially Kyle’s annoyance at people applying models to data without understanding under which conditions they can be used. As another physisict, that is one thing I find myself explaining to people a lot!
Don’t know if this is a good place to ask @empiricalcycling but I’d like to understand something better regarding MLSS. If this is a ‘steady state’, why does it have a limit (TTE)? What actually happens when we reach that limit, ie, what is it we are actually training when pushing that limit out?
I don’t have a full answer but when riding at MLSS, just because your lactate has reached a steady state doesn’t mean that other things have. You are still burning through carbohydrate and I’m sure other ‘fatigue markers’ are still rising. And don’t forget that your RPE will be rising also. Just because your body is at a steady state doesn’t mean that your pain tolerance and mental focus can remain the same thorughout the interval.
Yeah ok, I get that you have a limit of supply to create lactate, steady state or not. But I don’t think you reach TTE when you’ve burned through your energy reserves, or you could ride at FTP until you bonked. And I’d still like to understand what the other fatigue markers are.
Maybe the question is related to this debate we had on here somewhere about the aerobic process having no fatiguing byproducts.
This has probably been answered before, but I can’t seem to find it searching through here and via the article.
Is there a rule of thumb of how long you need to go before TTE for the test to be valid? Do you need to get through the first ten minutes at 92-95% target FTP to be valid? What about the 15mins at target FTP? Or do you need to start ramping before the test becomes accurate? etc
I’m just thinking if someone truly overestimated their FTP they might not make it very far into the test, but still take average power, which would be pretty high.
On the flip-side, severely underestimating the FTP could result in too low of an FTP because the large portions of your average power come from the 10min at 92-95%, and 15min at 100%. If you sail through those and the ramp test, it would be way too low.
TL;DR: Is there a way to know if you over-estimated or under-estimated your target FTP based on how far into the test you got?
Think the consensus on here was that you should make it to somewhere within the ramp, if your ftp was somewhat correct before the test.
I also think that it should be related to your TTE, so something between 40-70 minutes maybe.
This totally reminded me of the craziness of the 90s financial markets with stuff like chaos theory being flung around as a panacea. 
Most excellent question! There are two things happening. First is fatigue (around and below FTP, more or less) is pretty much caused by glycogen depletion, as we’re not over FTP we’re not creating metabolic byproducts that might inhibit contraction. So when we train TTE out, we may or may not be getting the slow component effect of utilizing larger motor units (which may or may not be less efficient) so we are potentially aerobically training larger motor units, as well as filling them with more glycogen. The other thing we’re doing is increasing fat mobilization and oxidation, as those two things (probably more the latter since most variable state training will vastly improve the former in large motor units already without extensive FTP work) will be the big determinants of TTE.
When it comes to testing you should never use ERG as you could be holding yourself back.
Thanks, that explains it well for me. I guess a consequence is that to improve TTE, we actually need to push it, duh!