For most people that have been cycling/training for a while, ftp doesn’t change that much anymore, and testing twice a year is likely enough. If you train regularly, you know anyway if your ftp setting is off.
Anxiety about ramp test this week, preceeded by you getting all bent out of shape about your Vo2 intervals on power match last week.
I’d say as a start, just take a chill pill and try not to get too hung up about too many things.
You’re about to take a ramp test, not a test to see if you have some life-threatening condition, so what’s there to worry about? Just do it and enjoy it.
Literally the worst thing that could happen is that your workouts are slightly too easy for a few weeks.
Yes. But isn’t that the hole purpose of training? I first smiled when saw your comment but then I realized I’m doing RT tonight and stopped smiling.
I do not stress about the Ramp because I’m very happy to accept any number it comes away with, either higher or lower than what I am at now.
Just know its going to put me in a good ball park place for workouts ahead and then I’ll adjust as I see fit.
When doing them I do monitor the time and do aim to hit and exceed that 19:30 point, gives myself a target, but I’ve stopped before 19:30 plenty of times and sure it will happen often in the future
It’s not failure, just means workouts I’m doing are set wrong and will now enjoy them more as they’ll be the correct level. Works the other way too.
I like to call it Ramp Assessment, test implies some sort of failure possible and maybe thats what adds to peoples stress, should it be renamed?
But you can fail an assessment too! I guess the ramp tessessment gives you recommendations instead of a pass fail 
Have decided to try tonight’s one on the rollers. That should be… fun.
How about “workout calibration”? Which is basically what it is, it’s just setting your training levels for the next block. I was about to say you definitely can’t fail a calibration, but then remembered I have Garmin Vectors which fail to calibrate all too often…
This is me.
I got all worked up about my test yesterday… and my cleats were in shit condition, unclipped FIVE times by accident at around 360W when I was aiming to see 400W…
Now I have to redo my test today. Yesterday I was all excited. Today I’m just annoyed.
I love this. It implicitly acknowledges all the transient nonsense that goes into the assessment, like how well you slept and how warm it is in the room and what you ate last night. It’s a snapshot that’ll be good enough for a few weeks. 
I’ve learnt through many different styles of training over the years what works for me and what doesn’t.
The ramp test simply doesn’t give me an accurate reading of my true FTP, leading the workouts to become up to 5% too hard. I find a better representation of my threshold power comes when I do 20-25 min intervals.
Why don’t you just do a workout like Gray? That way it is not this massive event in the calendar it’s just a workout. I love Gray to reaffirm my threshold.
Just as people have mentioned before, the process is what is important. If you don’t hit the number you wanted and felt you held back, come back and do the ramp again. If you have hit your limit and you need to be really honest with yourself, move on for a couple of weeks.
Try to normalise the Ramp test rather than it being this mystical workout you perform 4 times a year that scares you.
Literally had a dream last night that I couldn’t pedal past 300w LOL perhaps I’ve got issues…
Anyway today is the day, I’ll post up with results compared to where I was thinking I’d end up
My first guess is that you’ve assigned yourself a goal and feel like you need to land on it perfectly.
My second guess is that there’s a bit of ego or self worth tied to hitting that goal.
Cool. You’ve got a goal + it’s tied to something that motivates you.
The next step is to normalize the testing protocol so it doesn’t psyche you out. Kids in HS do this by taking practice SAT/ACT tests. Maybe you can do the same? Once a week for 4 or 6 weeks?
The 3rd step (probably done in tandem) is to start to recognize that we’re throwing horseshoes not target shooting. That’s a hard one. Especially when you can outline your goals specifically. Maybe re-defining your goal so that you become a bit more focused on the process or ultimate end goal (sub-55 40k, top 10 in 10 races this year, sub-12 hour DK200, whatever) instead of the specific test numbers.
What do I know? This is shit my therapist tells me . . . and a struggle every day.
All this anxiety talk is kind making me ansious too for tonight’s ramp test. Specially since last night I hadn’t much sleep and I’m feeling a bit tired and sleepy today. Let’s see how it goes.
I guess the reason for all this anxiety is in March I was set to do my second ramp test on TR after 6 weeks of base, got super nervous about whether I gained anything, and tested at only 1w higher, my HR was elevated the whole test and cracked early. Ended up re-doing the test the following day once I calmed down and picked up another 6w from the day before.
I want to start my plan on time so I just want tonight to go smoothly so I don’t have to re-take the test tomorrow and push things back. I’m sure all will be good though
We’re all rooting for ya! Don’t think about it too much and go smash it dude.
Heart rate was inflated initially, normally I do 200w at 130-135bpm I was at 150 today. In the end did good though, held last minute at 398 so 298.5. I’m just rounding it to 300 and moving on. I did the test using my stages
For reference I recently did a 20 minute outdoor effort with the stages at 325w so ftp for that test is 309.
Indoor is harder so using the lower figure makes sense
As others pointed out, that 20min outdoor effort isn’t really a true ‘test’ because you probably didn’t follow the correct protocol for the 20min test which includes that nice 5 min clearing effort.
Your 298.5 result is still an improvement on your last indoor (real) assessment from March, so that’s progress whichever way you look at it.
Sounds like rounding it up to a nice, round 300 is for pure vanity, rather than anything else…
I say you could have saved yourself all the time and anxiety that came with preparing for this ramp test and just bumped yourself to 300. But if that helps you feel better about yourself, then who is anybody to argue.
Out of curiosity, where would you have drawn the line in the sand for rounding up to 300? 297,295,290…?
Well what can I say… HR was up all the way and inspite legs were still doing OK I stopped a little bit sooner than what I had in mind and the result is less 1w in my current FTP. Not a huge problem but it was supposed to go up even if only a few watts not going down.
Let’s see if this was only a bad day/test or if it really reflects my lack of improvement on the last 6 weeks of SSBI.
To add more depth to the confusion the last time I did the ramp test I was using the H2 for power. I made the decision to use my Stages with Powermatch this year since it will correlate to my outside numbers a bit better.
When I did 290w, I had averaged 387w with the H2, did not track the Stages that time
When I did my test yesterday, I had also averaged 387 with the H2, but 398 with the Stages
So if we compare apples to apples here, my FTP really did not change, which I guess I can’t complain about since I had a year full of hammering outside between the last test and just a few weeks ago. I rounded up to 300 because a. I was super close, b. because I have OCD and c. because it will probably be a mental boost
With respect I think you are massively overcomplicating it.
Your actual FTP doesn’t really matter, (inside or out) what matters is that the figure TR calculates (based on your test) is suitable for the next 6 weeks training. It should make it hard, but do-able (just…
)
If a week after a test you find TR workouts too easy, increase it by a few % or if you’re failing workouts drop it by a few%.
It’s just a figure to set a training load, it doesn’t really matter…