How did you specifically train these? Or did you?
I trained those efforts by doing stuff like the above!!
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Iāll second this. You can get close with WKO4, but the learning curve is extremely steep (itās taken me a solid 6 months of time investment to feel competent) and you need really good data to feed the model appropriately. And mostly I end up looking for what I need from the TrainerRoad workout library once Iām done digging into the nuts and bolts.
Iāve gone way down the rabbit hole and Iāve come back around to the fact that the TR plans are very well designed and any improvement in specificity will be pretty minor relatively speaking.
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Very olde skool! Sounds like how I used to train back in the lo-tech daysā¦without ever knowing exactly why I was doing it (but it did make me a very good hill climber).
Want to get better at a certain aspect of racing ā just do more of it, only faster!
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The direct link to Sonya Looneyās podcast is here: Why Training with Wattage and Heart Rate Aren't Enough with Dr. Andrew Sellars - Sonya Looney
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Looks like theyāre selling another get fit scheme.
Iād be more interested to know what fatigue and tiredness really is, than talk about breathing.
Iām totally following you now! 
āIf you repeat something long enough people will begin to believe itās the truth.ā
Had to smile reading this quote, this is actually exactly how I feel about polarized training. Especially the part āall pros/elites train that wayā. Seiler himself can say that this is not true for cyclists (and actually even XC skiiers) - the exception being track cyclists - but itās now one of those internet truths.
FTP? I find it a nice benchmark when youāre new to training with a powermeter. Helps to get the hang of it. Donāt like the CP model at all because you have to do even more testing. Of all the tests I find the 0.95xCP20 the most suitable. 8min or even the TR ramp, no, not really.
However, I stopped using FTP quite a while ago. Especially because the testing is too much of a mental burden for me. And we do not have a proper 20min stretch of road or hill around here. And indoors, nay. Especially since there is no real benefit to knowing it. TSS & co, quite frankly, for me this is nonsense.
What I like to do is check my fourth interval of 4 times 15min hill efforts. I consider this as a more honest estimate for this threshold/steady state/or however you want to call it.
With regards to training zones Iāve set them to my race demands, e.g. after several years of racing with a pm I know what the demands are. Iāve set the zones accordingly. And these do not change over the year because my race demands do not change. The zones are wide enough to allow variation. And above all I donāt have to test anymore. Iāve actually named two zones according to my A-race, little motivational helper.
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I totally agree TR plans are very well designed and work! Iāve made some great progress in a short amount of time following the SSB plans. Which is what SS is all about - best bang for the buck.
This winter Iām looking trying to target my aerobic base as I feel this is what Iām missing on my power profile (besides 1 min and 5 sec).
My feeling is that SSB targets the top end of aerobic system, and in my case, further emphasizing glycogen dependence. I am already a lactate machine, as discovered in a lactate test. I topped out at 16,3 mmol/l, where some might say needs immediate medical attention.
Anyhow, the recommendation from the sports lab where I did the test was I need to do lots and lots of easy aerobic endurance and minimize this threshold orientated training. This is where I ran into some problems with one FTP number and aerobic training contrasted with some Vo2 max intervals. Which got me thinking, and hence my interest in FTP and using it to build training zones. Iām still using a FTP number to base my TR training on, because I donāt have anything else right now, but only for Vo2 max intervals. For my aerobic workouts Iām using HR and RPE and adjusting the intensity as needed.
From reading the different training threads on here, Iād say thatās the best way to go ā HR for low intensity work and power for high intensity work.
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Because there is a broad range of data that shows that aerobic capability is heavily correlated to FTP within a very small range.
Itās the supra-threshold efforts that begin to have a wider variability.
Example:
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Coggan doesnāt have any ongoing relationship with TrainingPeaks or WKO4 from what Iām aware. (in other words, I donāt think he benefits from additional sales of WKO4) although he obviously was involved in the development.
Of all the products on the market on the modeling front, WKO4 is the most accurate by a large margin, but itās also one of the least user friendly products ever built and as such is useless for 99% of cyclists.
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And WKO doesnāt make prescriptions. It just presents information that needs an expert to interpret and act on it.
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Thatās my understanding too. Thatās why I donāt understand why he does this. Ego? Misguided altruism? I could understand if a TrainingPeaks rep got on there and commented. But whatās Coggan doing?
Very true! 
And just for fun, what is the WKO metric that gives me this? I think there is one, right? (edit: not being sarcastic here. genuine, but hopefully fun/interesting, question)
The thing it offers is Optimized Intervals, which gets close. Still requires a lot of interpretation and knowing your capability to utilize properly. And thatās only if your 90 day power curve has enough good data!
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FRC is their Wā equivalent, but they donāt calculate it in the same way and they donāt have any sort of FRC balance because they donāt have a model/recharge rate that they say is repeatable or useful.
Coggan iLevels give you some deeper targeting (not my numbers, just grabbed something to illustrate)
Optimized Intervals
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Iāve seen Coggan state in online discussions that FTP has a very strong correlation (like r=.95) for efforts starting at like 2 minutes all the way up to several hours.
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I guess for me, it was Coggans comments on that post that caught my attention. Him basically saying he never claimed FTP was equal to LT, and he never suggested 95% of 20 min power can be used to estimate FTP and he preferred other methods due to sufficient variation between individuals. And most importantly FTP does not equal 60 min power. These are all the fundamentals of FTP based training, are they not?
Yeah this is a tough one to wrap oneās head around. FTP (as conceptualized by Coggan and modeled within WKO) does not equal 60 min power. It correlates to it. I know, annoying, because it just seemed like I āword-smithedā you. Not my intention. The ācorrelationā part is important.
I think of it this way, if FTP = 60min power were what they (Coggan, et al) intended, you would NOT have the following metric:
TTE (Time To Exhaustion) - Training to extend the maximum duration at which a power equal to FTP can be maintained.
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Golden Cheetah, being open source, having multiple model choice and a seemingly very active and specialized community, would seem to me as the better candidate for āmost accurate on the model frontā. And the least user friendly as well
Unless WKO4 is using proprietary modelling