Don’t worry too much. There are a lot of us here who find the supra threshold stuff hard. But can do sweetspot til the cows come home!
The AC intervals are meant to be hard, and feeling very uncomfortable is all part of the fun.
The level of concentration required for these is so high, you don’t want to do them if you are not in the right place mentally, or physically.
Rather than adjust your FTP, it might be better to drop the intensity a few %, just for these AC intervals.
From what you say, it sounds like you find the below threshold workouts relatively comfortable. So you certainly don’t want to be doing those at lower intensity.
Hope you can stick with it 
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I’m 6’3”, 225lbs, 51, mostly mountain biker but I gravel in swing seasons,bike park, ride the pump track. I’m an MTB instructor and I’m on the bike a lot all summer and train on the Kickr (last 3 seasons) all winter, heading in to season 8 of trainer road.
My ftp started around 200 and now ramp tests about 280. I start my first of 3 Trainer Road blocks in October and set my FTP to 295. I will test in the blocks and I will rise my FTP to 305 or 310 in January regardless of the test results. I can’t seem to get over 280 on the ramp test, but I don’t really care. I use my perceived effort to guide the FTP setting.
With my FTP at 295 I will complete all workouts in low-volume sweet spot base build, with my strong cadence ranging 95-110; as I get tired on the last intervals my cadence will drop 5-10. That’s how I “feel” the FTP is where I want it. In January with higher FTP settings, my cadence may be slightly lower overall but generally over 85rpm, and on later intervals will drop 5-10rpm.
My weight is always 215-225lbs. I can’t get it lower. I don’t really try to diet because I need fuel for the workouts and if I’m hungry I feel horrible. I have lost several waist sizes though, and I have become very lean in the last few years. Not lighter, but generally stronger and leaner. My hear rate tests quite low (max 165) and my time to recovery HR during exercise is very fast. I rate my fitness as high and my endurance as high and my short term (1.5hrs) riding output as high.
I do low volume plans because I strength train once or twice a week, and fatbike and XC ski at least twice a week. If I don’t do anything outdoor, I sometimes add workouts. I think if I had the discipline to do a high volume plan I might see some FTP gains, but at 51 I think recovery is very important to my well being (I have bad knees and a bad hip from years of Rugby and Lacrosse). I love to train and feel exhausted, but I’m a weekend warrior and I still want to have fun.
My goals for the last 2 winters have been to increase my cadence at all power output levels, and extended my FTP for longer duration. FTP Is your theoretical maximum output for 1 hour; I want my FTP to be that high for 2-3 hours. I don’t really have a way to test my 2 hour FTP, other than I consistently outride my friends, and by the end of January I am raising my FTP above my test scores and easily handling my workouts.
(Qualifier: I don’t take the numeric comparisons too seriously and I’m not a coach or trainer and these are just my observations about my own data from using Zwift and Trainer Road)
My w/kg is over 3.0. In Zwift Races I am in category B, and last year got flagged for sandbagging (in my best crit race) and bumped to category A, even though I am not “testing” over 4.0 w/kg. Upon inspection in Zwift Power, yeah, my power output over different durations (5min, 3min, 30 sec, 10 sec) is well above many other Cat B Riders, and yes it is up in A (barely for some, well into A for other). So, based on data, my “normal” w/kg is not really reflective of my FTP capacity and application of my riding ability.
All that to say that big guys like us have a lot of extra power in muscles and some of the numbers we use to profile and test don’t necessarily reflect that. Makes sense; every rider is a combination of athletic abilities and strength and you can be smart about how you use them. (This is not my chart BTW)
If you want to travel down the rabbit hole, I’d suggest reading everything here, in order.
Good Hunting:
http://www.flammerouge.je/factsheets/factsheets.htm
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Thank you all again for your input. I just finished another round of ssblv last week. As suggested here, I did the 20 min test protocol instead of the ramp. Instead of my disappointing 230W I came up with 253W. I probably would have done even better had I realized sooner that erg mode automagically turned off during the 20 min effort. (Sure seemed easy for the first minute or so until I figured that out). This basically confirms all the great advice in this thread. Like @juarez my Max HR is relatively low. Never seen it above 160 and rarely above 155.
Eric
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Good job. You can always manually tweak your FTP by feel down the line after a couple of workouts if you sold your 20 minute test a little short.
[quote=“erussellmarsh, post:16, topic:46042”]
One thing that would be very nice to see in the training plans is some indication of how hard a given ride should be, taking into account where it falls in the cycle.[/quote]
I don’t know if you figured this one out, but the IF (intensity factor) when you click on a workout is the target NP (normalized power) as a ratio of your FTP. In other words, an IF of 1.0 would be a workout with NP the same as your FTP, 0.75 = 75% of FTP etc. This basically tells you at the outset how hard (intense) a workout is going to be.