Just following up on my lamarck post above. Just finished. Yowza!
Upped my ftp to 295w from 285w and barely finished lol It’s crazy considering this is 30w higher than intervals I had been doing for SSB, which topped off at 267. Super stoked
oh and there’s no way in hell I’m doing the hour right now lol
Oh no - I didn’t know this existed. Now, I have this horrible idea in my head. Must abandon immediately!
I won’t make it to an hour - but I can try, right?
I feel like the proper way to run this challenge would be to make it a rolling challenge. All of us are on different training plans and schedules, but we’re all doing some kind of FTP assessment on a regular basis. Obviously it’s not fair to do this at the end of a training bloc because we should expect people to be overperforming at that stage.
How about this protocol:
Short of someone deliberately tanking their ramp test, that would give us the cleanest and most comparable data set in terms of whether FTP really is hour power.
I’m in but will do it on my schedule, probably at the end of week 3 of a 4 week block.
I did Lamarck, too. It confirmed that I could stay at my previous 248, while a bad Ramp Test yesterday suggested 236. No plans for the hour challenge, though.
I have Mount Goode coming up on Thursday in my training plan. I just did a ramp test on Sunday, and have a new FTP.
However . . . maybe I do the “Hour Record” workout instead of Mount Goode?
Is the point of this test to attempt the Hour Record workout until failure?
Or to complete it no matter what and just adjust FTP % accordingly in order to complete?
(The 3rd option being to actually complete it without adjusting at all 
)
Would you recommend using ERG or PowerMatch?
I’m seriously considering this . . . and I’m not currently drinking as I was last night 
The Hour Record in resistance mode until failure will give you the most useful information out of any of those options and should be a good workout that is similar stimulus to Mount Goode.
Why wouldn’t I try to hold on for the duration of the whole workout and just lower the watts, as necessary, to complete? Why would doing it until failure give me more useful info?
I’m not challenging your POV, just curious as to what you’d glean…
P.S. - The hardest threshold workout I’ve ever done without any failure at all is Donner (3x12 at threshold) – or Carpathian Peak, if you conside Over/Unders true threshold work.
Failure: In this case I define it as any backpedal or reduction in watts at all – I have completed harder workouts . . . just had to bail out for a bit.
None of this bodes well 
Because you are changing the desired stimulus at that point and are no longer getting the benefit of being in threshold. I’m not talking about small adjustments (a few watts), but if you are going from threshold to lower sweet spot, I’d probably just pull the plug.
Knowing how long you can hold your FTP is very useful information and tells you where you might be weak versus strong. Also, going into the workout with the psychological priming that “I’m going until I fail” is a different mentality than “I’ll turn the intensity down”. You’ll probably push hard and last longer in the first scenario rather than the latter.
Victor Campanaerts just announced April 12-13 as his date to have a crack at Wiggo’s record. Maybe we could coincide the challenge with this?
I did a new ramp test yesterday that gave me an FTP of 231W (3.7W/Kg). 30 min later I did a Zwift race that took 1:00:46 with an average of 224W (240NP). Last week did a Zwift race with a finish time of 48:00 that had an average of 245W (250NP). Yesterday Zwift gave an estimated FTP of 241W. My understanding is that Zwift uses 95% of your 20 minute power to give their estimate. So ramp test, 20 min power estimate, and my 1 hour average all came within 7% yesterday. Overall I’d consider that pretty good agreement. My actual 1 hour average wasn’t too far under my ramp test FTP so I think that I could manage to do the challenge…but not sure I want to suffer that much:)
So you did a zwift race after your ramp test with an average power almost equal to the FTP after the test .
I would not able to do this. Sure you went deep enough during the test? I think your FTP is higher ;…
Was thinking about that too. Would be fun. I think he will do it April 17
Ah, yep. Just looked and got my dates wrong. Would be interesting getting a cross section of riders doing it in combo with a ramp test. Could compare results to various plans and training phases or even methods (ie. blind vs seeing metrics) etc. would make for interesting analysis
Finished SSB2L, getting ready for Build, and did my latest Ramp Test 3 days ago. I think I fall into the minority where it returns a too high result (it matched my SSB2 VO2 target). Rather than trying for an hour at this new FTP, tonight I’m going to use it and see how near I can get using the 8 min test instead.
Can most people do this no problem?
You should be able to knock it out since you have some VO2 work in your system. Give it a shot, it’s good to experiment. 
It’s certainly possible you’re right but I didn’t have anything else that morning.
I’m not a big power guy so I don’t have to go too far above my FTP before I’m tapped out. I think that the last steps of the ramp test had me around 265W to get that FTP of 231. Once I lose momentum and can’t spin I’m toast. Based on how hard Avalanche Spire seemed this morning with the new FTP I certainly wouldn’t want it set any higher for my TR workouts. All of the methods of FTP estimation have their own limits. Strava gives me an estimate of 254, Zwift says 241, TR ramp says 231. All of my work is endurance stuff. I’m doing sustained power build right now and then will go to XC marathon or century plan.
Ramp test works okay for me for a pre-race warm-up. Even though you hit failure it doesn’t last long enough to be a big detriment to race performance after a 30-45 min recovery. I was doing an ODZ race that has neutral roll-out for a few miles so there was extended recovery and warm-up.
When I look at my Zwiftpower numbers most of the races that are 45-60 minutes put me right around 225W for the longer ones and up to 245W on the shorter.
Friends don’t let friends use the Strava or Zwift FTP estimates. They are fundamentally flawed.