Sprinter with low ramp test result?

[bbarrera]

@bspitz

I started TR with outdoor workouts only. Workouts at 240 FTP felt very easy, and by mid-November I had ratcheted up my FTP setting to 280.

I started using an indoor trainer in late Dec. My first ramp test put me at 244, my second (2 weeks later) was 255, and my third (3 weeks later) was 260. I manually bumped that up to 265. I attribute most of the improvement to having a better understanding of the test and my bike/trainer setup.

Strava estimates my FTP at 299, Xert at 300, and HRV4 at 297. Normalized power in a recent, VERY short (15 min) crit was 310.

Personally I’ve not seen a mismatch between indoor and outdoor FTP, but others have as @KorbenDallas points out.

Without knowing the efforts being fed to Xert, its hard to comment on using that to triangulate without a long test. As someone else mentioned the crit is a poor datapoint for help with triangulating.

@bspitz

sweet spot medium volume base 2, and I am not quite sure how I should feel during workouts.

“not quite sure” to my eyes means you need to do a hard / long effort, like the 31-min effort I did yesterday (or longer). Given the apparent discrepancy between indoor and outdoor, if you want to set zones for FTP and below on the trainer then either do a 20-min test on the trainer or do a longer effort at threshold if you are good at pacing.

Over time if you pay attention to HR and feeling (RPE) then you can more confidently set FTP manually based on sweet spot and threshold work on the trainer. Or just settle on a more traditional protocol like (Hunter Allen) 20-min test or (Joe Friel) 30-min test, or try a newer/longer test like Kolie Moore’s protocol.

And to @onemanpeloton point, find one that works for you and stick with it. I prefer longer tests, but still use ramp test to set an upper bound on 5-min vo2max power.