That will not matter.
That wasn’t my experience. My first go at handing the reins over ended in burnt out legs before the end of SSB1 LV(Edit: I add extra TN rides to LV). AT failed to back me off before I was cooked.
In my case, the ramp test is next to useless for setting trFTP for training. I’m currently resigned to picking a guesstimate based on how SS and threshold work feels.
Bring on the TR FTP estimate.
100% agree with your point of view. Lab testing is king but you are not going to do that every 6 weeks unless you are a professional athlete with a coach who owns a lab.
Next best thing is repeating the same (flawed but consistent) test over and over again. Why? because it gives a measure of difference. Same with watt numbers. I have heard rumours that certain power meters (SRM) are not that ‘positive’ compared to others for example. But it does not matter since the measurement is about relative instead of absolute values.
It’s funny that a lot of the responses in this topic are about people’s talent to ‘express’ their FTP in various tests. A lot of coping basically. While in fact is does not matter that much. Again, it’s about progress. Not the absolute result.
Diving more and more into training I’m starting to think that:
- ‘Proper’ stimulus/recovery to improve is much lighter than I thought (hard but achievable, instead of rip yourself apart/chase high TSS). Trainerroad AT excels in this compared to other training programs(!).
- Driving up your FTP is a personal combination of raising the roof (Vo2 work) or widening the base (SS work). Trainerroad Level system basically.
- FTP assessment is needed for setting levels of training. Then train at them using the above.
Again, my experience with Xert and reading some of the comments it seems that:
- Not all athletes are willing to go all-out. Some like myself find this a bit strange since racing hurts much more, but I understand that not everybody races or likes to feel ‘pain’. However, as pointed out by many people above, this is also a part mental training. Without a strong mental side, training has no point other than ‘excersice’. If it does not hurt to some degree, you won’t find much improvement. Maybe direct those people to a low intensity, high volume plan?
- Having a ‘derived FTP’ from a ride like Xert/Intervals.icu and soon TR will lead some athletes to approaching training as ‘game of PR’s’. It did for me, but it did not make me much faster. It basically topped out my base fitness. It changes the reason to change from ‘getting better’ to → reaching the next improvement as ASAP.
Example: I can probably beat my best all-time 1min effort at this point in time. But it does not serve my trainning in any meaningfull way. Instead I’m getting season PR’s of VO2 intervals that i repeat 25x according to the training TR prescribes. The former makes my ego feel better, the latter prepares me for raceday. What matters to you most?
If you rate workout’s very hard or ‘all out’ it will back you down, no exceptions. Did you do this?
Not until my legs were cooked. Prior to that the workouts weren’t Very Hard, or Hard.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m doing things differently now and enjoying the variations in workouts.
However, I’m not sure I’ll ever bother with another ramp test for FTP estimation.
Also your actual achievable FTP on any given day is going to vary, potentially a fair bit, based on fatigue, indoor/outdoor etc (even weather conditions).
On Intervals.icu you can actually get the eFTP from every ride (and plot that with your eFTP) - looking at mine I see a decent amount of inter-day variability in eFTP even for what I would have assumed were similar max efforts.
E.g., Saturday just gone Intervals calculates an eFTP of 291 based on 18 mins at 308 watts - this is a decent amount more than my training FTP currently (276) and actually higher than any test result I’ve achieved in the past.
But then my ZRL race on Tuesday - IF of 1.00 for the ~51min race(!) had a ride eFTP of 275 (i.e., basically bang on my training FTP).
(I actually think I can do slightly better power numbers outdoors which is what’s at least partly caused the difference here. But shows that FTP isn’t absolute).
@Nate_Pearson oh my gosh this is exciting. I am excited. This is very cool.
If you/anyone is getting burned out from SSBLV1 there are other factors at play. This is the gentlest plan TR offers, so this can’t be blamed on AT.
Here’s my TR set FTP (in purple) against intervals.icu’s eFTP (in orange) for the last fourteen months.
I was only riding outdoors from March to October so didn’t test which is why the TR value flatlines, the FTP tests earlier in the year were just failures where I’d give up after fifteen minutes or so. On returning to indoors I averaged the TR value and the highest eFTP and am using that for TR workouts.
At the moment I’d say the most likely value for my FTP is about midway between the two so about 282W.
I have to agree. Could be anything from survey responses out of phase, outside factors (life, stress, nutrition) and such. Even if a person started with an FTP 10-20% overstated, the first couple of workouts and rating of Very Hard to All Out (which would seem to be expected if FTP is that far off), would lead to drops in AT planned workouts.
Hard to say without more info, but something was definitely off there, and I don’t think a high FTP is at fault.
It’s not so gentle when your ramp test result is way off.
I went into detail about my experience in another thread. It happened.
I looked it up in my ramp test notes and you were to blame, along with the Prodigy drum and bass mix.
“247 Result. I was in the right mood with some drum and bass (Prodigy mix) and MI-XC race vids”.
That is not accurate in all cases, depends on a few other things. But if a sweet spot workout is very hard or all-out it’s going to back you off.
Those should not feel that way.
My best guess is that the ramp test result was off by 10-12%. I made a note that I bailed on the minute mark instead of squeezing out the last drop.
I do LV plus endurance rides from TN when I can. I also try to get outside most weekends.
My survey responses were pretty reasonable. The first week was moderate, even though I was being told to do threshold for SS.
Week 2 had me listing things as hard. Eichorn is a legit workout if you’re 10-12% over. Moose’s Tooth -1 was more likely an easy VO2 session.
Things didn’t get easier the following week.
It’s always possible that outside factors played a part. That’s always a wild card, although there wasn’t anything overly special going on around that time.
I’ve been using TR since 2017. I was well aware that things were about to go pear shaped quickly.
This is all the more reason for TR to come up with a better way to set FTP/workout levels. Whatever you want to call them. 
Same here. My outdoor numbers are SO much better than indoor for any sort of higher-intensity effort - but when I’m training indoors, I need to use my indoor “training watts” estimate to keep things in range. And yes, I use fans, and music, and fuel adequately indoors…
Intervals in many respects is like Xert and WKO, it relies on a ‘max’ effort, however it does a pretty good job with ‘hard’ efforts 10 minutes or less.
On the other hand my Garmin 530 is using a different method (heart rate, HR variability, power, machine learning) and will give fairly good estimates even if I’m primarily doing endurance and tempo rides (with a smidge of above threshold work).
A recent example:
| FTP Estimate from | before 11 min max effort | after 11min max effort |
|---|---|---|
| Garmin | 258 | 260 |
| Intervals | 237 | 263 |
| WKO | 236 | 251 |
| Xert | 249 | 250 |
For how I’m training right now, WKO really needs a very hard/max effort closer to 20+ minutes. Xert gave me a breakthrough but only bumped 1W.
Guess my key message is to not overthink it, I’ve had very long periods of time (4-6 months) of highly effective training using only HR and rough estimates of ftp to set zones. Just don’t overestimate ftp.
The team have to work extra hard the next days. My ramp test is scheduled for tuesday jan.25 so you have 4 days to get things running LOL
I’m interested to see how TR FtP estimate aligns with Garmin eftp. Can’t wait to see some blog posts, if any, happen when they release the new feature.
Edit; recently another garmin estimate was 7 watts lower than what my ftp is set to. Crazy part is I did some hard accelerations and z2 work. Still gave me an estimate 
How do you find the Garmin tracks if you stop training?
I’ve noticed similar results to your example above when I’m on an upwards trajectory. My MTB PM tends to read slightly higher than the others, so it can run a smidge above what feels right.
When I take a break it stays elevated until I’ve done several rides with lower fitness.
On the other hand, it tells me my fitness age is 37. It must know what it’s talking about, right? 
I’ve often thought about starting an offshoot from the Cycling Memes and Jokes thread.
The “Sh*t My Garmin Says” thread. Tell me all the things Garmin.
This is quite common. And I don’t just mean because some folks use different devices indoors vs. outdoors. But, the improved cooling (unless you’re in a wind tunnel, no amount of fans is going to replicate the outdoors), fluctuations in resistance as the road pitches up and down, body positioning, mental distraction of an outdoor ride all make a difference.
For me, even time seems to pass faster when doing intervals outdoors. So, either there is a difference in gravity in my garage versus the roads near me or there is a difference in PE. I favor the latter.