Poor Workout Poor Energy

:laughing:

Makes sense. I assumed the FTP was ā€œcorrectā€ and forgot that it is an estimation based on a number of variables which are different for various people with varied experience.

I’m learning from all the comments that the most important is to just keep getting on the bike and trying to finish each session either by slightly reducing FTP or choosing a reasonably difficult work out that I can finish.

For now I’ll try to reduce the FTP and see how that goes, and will try other recommendations if that fails.

It’s quite new for you.
Maybe, on the longer workouts, start at normal intensity for the first set. THEN adapt if you feel you won’t be able to complete.
Seriously, you need to give your body, and your mind, time to react, adapt, get used to just how fricking hard this is :smiley:
If you manage to finish the 1h ones, I wouldn’t worry,m seriously.

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Just remember that it is supposed to be hard.
You aren’t going to damage yourself by pushing yourself to limits.

I remember when i started running at a club doing intervals. For ages as soon as the effort & hurt got extreme i’d pull back thinking i was at a cliff edge of danger in some way. Your body has all the failsafes and protections built in. Your limiter is how hard you can make yourself lean in to the effort.

If you give up and go for an hour’s easy pootle along and shy away from pushing your limits then you’ll always be slow.

To see if your FTP is set correctly - what was your heart rate when doing Mount Field? and what is your max heart rate?

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FWIW, it’s not always supposed to be hard. Sub threshold work should be relatively easy. If FTP is set correctly, sweet spot should feel very doable and repeatable. If SS feels torturous then FTP may be set too high or you are having an off day. There’s no shame in cutting power on sub threshold workouts. You don’t’ want power in a sub-threshold zone with RPE or HR at threshold or higher.

Sure, threshold and higher intervals will be hard but they represent a small percentage of total workout time.

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Last time I did Mountfield was last year, when I started the SS base training. Only managed the first week before work commitments took away my evenings. My FTP after ramp test was 129. Never used the turbo trainer since, but had been riding outdoors for fun with friends now and again.

3 weeks ago I retook the ramp test (on a new bike with much better groupset) and got 140. I set up customised training plan for a big ride in August. Trainerroad cut out 1st week (mountfield is included in first week - I think its actually first fide after the ramp test) in order to fit the custom training plan in my training schedule for the big ride in August.

Last year’s Mountfield HR was approximately 148bpm (FTP was 129 back then).

Have never done a proper max heart rate test, but the max heart rate recorded on my last ramp test was 182bpm.

RCC what are your thoughts?

Agreed, I hadn’t taken into account that some people will push themselves way, way to hard.

You want to go hard enough, but not too hard. The wisdom comes from learning yourself and what you can do.

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Hard to tell exactly but that’s to sort of HR i’d see as well on Mount Field and i have a similar maxHR.

Mount Field is the easier end of sweet spot but 12 minutes is still a long time and it still feels reasonably hard. Hard enough so you sweat a lot and have a devil on your shoulder telling you to wimp out, but not too hard that you can’t push through. I use it as one of my go-to rides when i want to do ā€œsomething usefulā€ but i’m feeling a bit scared of most of Chad’s other workouts :slight_smile:

It just sounds like you are new. So it’s a big learning process, not least in learning yourself. Stick with it though and in a year’s time you might find that your rest intervals are at 129W. :+1:

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Thanks RCC