To be clear you were both discussing 4x 10’
Your post here makes it sound like a single 10 minute effort.
40 mintues for a ‘true sprinter’ is going to be much harder than for a longer distance athlete no matter how its split up.
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and herein lies the problem.
- lactate build up is not making you fatigue.
- do a long hard sustainable effort, paced fairly steady watts, and hold it till you are done. aim for 40 mins at least. call that your FTP. its not full gas!!, its min 40 mins so can’t be full gas. the last 10 mins will suck. i did this yesterday, and guess what, my FTP is lower than AI says. and i’m glad it is. now i have reality, and a TTE to work on.
- ride FTP work based on FTP, and you don’t need to ride at 100%
- ride vo2 max work, MAX.
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To make sure we are on the same page… in my post I was commenting how power athletes may struggle with endurance/threshold, as endurance athletes may struggle with the sprint). I used the 100 meter track & field sprinter as an example.
But to answer your question, I never test their threshold power, it is inconsequential. It’s hard enough to get them to run a 400 
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So how sure are you that you couldn’t have put on 10w more during that 40min? Suffer more but still sustain? I guess you can’t be. I couldn’t, because mentally chosing the easier route and rationalize it is way too easy for me.
But even IF you now have somehow a more true FTP or what you call “reality”, that still doesn’t say that this makes you faster. TR at least says they have the data showing that their FTP and protocols make people faster on average.
In the end, objectively, now your are doing less (and suffer less). One could argue that this is the opposite of what makes anyone progress (given you could sustain the previous protocol).
I am not saying you are doing wrong. Maybe its the best thing for you. Just wondering how you can be so sure about it.
Lower your FTP. For what it’s worth, I’m going the POL MV (with added Z2), and been crushing the threshold workouts (even the ones I dread looking at before the workout - I’m near 7 PL on threshold) - but not in a way that they feel “too easy” either (I usually hesitate between moderate to hard on the survey)
If you can’t put on 10W duriting this test from mental reasons, probably you will not able to put up this 10W during regular, daily training. And if you are 10W lower than your “real” FTP at your test you should be able go longer than 40min on the test and end up at 50-60min with something to give.
Not to mention that 10W should not do so much difference to your training (if your FTP is more than 100W) - in worst case scenario you will be able to do more work at your FTP and recover easier. Doesn’t sound so bad.
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i could not have done +10 watts, and held it for 40 mins. i have enough experience to know that and since its supposed to be a gauge of a threshold, which can be sustained for a significant length of time, and i wanted that TTE to be 40 mins or so. if i had added 10 watts on it would have ended before 30 mins and have been way above what i understand ftp to be. now i have watts and time. my plan now and for the next block, is to train to extend my TTE, while the getting faster bit will come later, based on info gathered outside of TR. improvements do not come from suffering more. stimulus and signalling, fuelling and recovery create performance gains. hammering ftp intervals with an inflated ftp, isn’t going to last long. VO2 max intervals done too low isn’t going to shift VO2 max.
only my own opinion i might add. lets hope it works out lol
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Yeah, but if 60 minutes (or less) is the max amount you can hold your FTP, those workouts are nowhere close to easy either.
TR has some workouts at level 9 that are 2x40, with little rest. Those shouldn’t really be possible unless your threshold is wrong.
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I think people get confused because we are trying to find MLSS (key words being steady and state). It’s not supposed to be the power for as long as you can mentally suffer for 40 minutes or whatever benchmark you choose.
So many people on the forum buy into the ‘more is better’ philosophy. It seems logical that training harder makes you faster and it might until you crash and burn. Often, we get TR members complain that sweet spot burns them out or they suffer on ten minute threshold intervals. Both of those should feel relatively easy (7 or 8 out of 10 effort).
More is not better when people get the key metric wrong.
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You mean Velika? Done that, using AI FTPD, updated 2 weeks before workout. Although true, instead of 2min, had 7min rest. Assumed that FTP is wrong but week after that did Koolie Moore test, got same result as AI FTPD predicted. Happened 2 months after bumping volume from ~15h/week → 22-25h/week and lowering intensity considerably. Wasn’t even working on extending TTE, it was simply byproduct.
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Ability to hold the power in one go is a little different than TTE during intervals… For me it is usually 15-20 min when divided into intervals. When I can do 4x20 then I know my tte is around 50-60min.
FTP is dependant on tte that can be 40-80 min. You can have properly set FTP and be able to hold it for 80 min. It’s rare but possible.
2x40 in TR are done at 97% FTP. So they are possible if your TTE is 60 min. Yes, they are specialist workouts for TTers and probably small percentage of TR users can do them. But they do not have to as they are not needed. People struggle with 10 min intervals, that shouldn’t be the case. 40 min intervals are different beasts .
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How are you fuelling those efforts?
And with that I mean, what are you eating same day before the intervals and the night before? Makes a huge difference.
Sounds a bit like me before I stared riding with a coach. TrainerRoad set my FTP too high, but I also had really shitty efficiency on the bike.
I would probably start with lowering your FTP 10w, that can be difference of riding at high threshold vs riding above.
And then make sure you really fuel the day before and before the workout.
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Thanks! I feel like I eat all the time anyway. But I could certainly try to take in some extra carbs during the workout. Right now I just go with my breakfast oats + half banana that I have before my workouts.
That sounds like way way way too little carbs for threshold workouts.
Try something like 4 pieces of toast with honey, and a banana 
Also oats are high in fibre so they need much more time to digest = not optimal if it’s meant to be pre training food.
Finally, fuelling starts the night before. Dinner and evening snacks need to have plenty carbs.
Try 250g of uncooked pasta for dinner, with something simple on the side. And then evening snacks you can do some cereal or such (cheerios with some milk). Then do 4-5 toasts with honey or jam for breakfast.
That should cover it 
then it’s enough to do 40-60g an hour of carbs for the session itself.
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Highly suggest you cook it before you eat it 
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If you don’t cook it, you’ll need some extra hydration before your workout.
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Heheheh
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Yes, I agree, 2x40m at threshold should not be doable. Maybe if you have been training lots of threshold intervals, and you have a very strong endurance as well, you might be able to do two 40 min threshold blocks in a longer ride with 20-30min rest between and good fueling. Maybe.
I have never tried something like that. Longest threshold intervals I do are 20mins. Sometimes I do 40-45min at threshold in training for one effort.
Since it is late in progression level I think the idea is that your set threshold going into the block is no longer your threshold, but maybe 95%, since you’ve made some gains (hopefully)? 2x40min at 95% is a very hard workout, but doable. It is the only thing that makes sense to me. If the AI FTP detection is adjusting your FTP upwards as you progress, these kinds of workouts becomes really strange.
Update: Read that it was 97%. That is a hard workout… I will give it a try in the end of January when I am approaching the end of base and threshold focus.
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@Overratedcarbon, welcome!
Of course, you can always keep the training plan as Mid Volume but depending on how much you’re riding inside vs. outside, switch the current phase you’re in to Mid or Low.
For example, if you wanted to switch your current Build Phase to Low Volume you can do so from the Calendar annotation. See image:
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