The IF 1.0 in an hour club

Just managed

2 Likes

I expect people might tell me I’m doing too much intensity but my training is essentially 100% trainer indoors at the moment and z2 sucks.

I got close to it, 0.98. Went out this past Saturday with some energy to burn and did some climbing. New 20min PR with 358W, too.

nice to see so many examples! I guess I didn’t mention in my original post that my little goal would be done within a zwift race, which I’ve been doing lately to give myself something competitive before I dive back into SSB HV. I suppose if I really wanted to get to the goal I could pick something like the alpe climb! In normal (road) racing the goal is to conserve energy but when it comes to zwift I’m trying to get the most out of myself for these events.

Did 0.99 for 2 hours 23 min…outdoors. Clearly my outdoor FTP is higher than indoors.

I’ve managed 1.0 indoors several times during Zwift races, but all for efforts around 45 minutes.

1 Like
2 Likes

Last night’s WTRL race.

3 Likes

0.99 in last night’s race - must try harder :roll_eyes:

3 Likes

Close enough right?

3 Likes

I also failed last night - 0.99

5 Likes

@KRL @jchappers @jonathanwaddell I did a WTRL event yesterday (a regular race, not the league) and got dropped pretty quickly despite averaging 300 for the first 4mins (in my very brief experience in the past 4 races I’ve been able to stay at the front at similar power). At the time it seemed like there was some crazy massive power surge, but the podium folks had very reasonable power in the B category (I averaged 3.7w/kg and ended up nearly 9 mins back by the finish). So yesterday turned into more of a tempo day for me at 0.87 (I did do 92% for the last 20mins which had Leith Hill as the finale)

Lose draft of main group and your done

1 Like

yeah, it really doesn’t take much, and of course is a common zwift physics complaint alongside the difficulty in breaking away.

2 Likes

I’ve done 0.97 in 1:48.

1 Like

To illustrate this and @jonathanwaddell comment, in the other cat B race the winner pulled only 3.3 wkg avg (way below the 3.9 max)

What you’ll notice from the top 7 finishers is the higher variability index than the rest of the field - the top finishers drafted drafted drafted all race and saved their energy to hammer the start, inclines and finish. They only need to do enough to not lose the draft of the front group.

Fun times…
image

4 Likes

If I understand the calculation of IF correctly, it’s going all out for an hour, a maximum effort. By that logic, you shouldn’t be able to have an IF above 1.0, and if you do, you’re underestimating your FTP in the calculation, right? More than 1.0 would mean you’re putting out more than your maximum effort, which doesn’t really work.

FTP isn’t tied to a specific duration. If you have a time to exhaustion longer than an hour you could have an IF over 1. Pros can have TTEs over 90 minutes.

1 Like

FTP is defined as your maximum power output for an hour though, and TTE is how long you can hold that power, which could potentially be more than an hour. We’re also talking about reasonably steady efforts, not a collection of sprints that can have a higher normalized power vs average power. If you can do a steady effort for an hour at higher than FTP, then you have a new FTP value to use. :man_shrugging:

It’s defined as the maximal effort you can sustain in a quasi steady state beyond which you rapidly fatigue. ‘About an hour’ comes from a single off hand comment that a 40kTt is a reasonable test for it.

1 Like