Recently I have been testing different training platforms after hitting a pretty hard plateau and a slow backslide over the last year. My goal has been to raise my ftp so I can actually put my sprint power to use at the end of crits. Last year I felt I was too close to the edge in my races and absolutely smoked/redlining. My highest ftp was 280s last year. Since then i’ve backslide into the 270s. My life comes with a whole dose of complications in recovery due to working at a busy fire station on a 24/48 split. During my stint with XERT, after doing some sprint efforts to feed it info – it calculated a TP of 170, HIE of 48, and Peak Power of 1830. I guess xert’s threshold power is a more truly sustainable 40-70min power. HIE is high intensity energy, and I guess 48 is extremely high; a support member came in and tweaked this for me bc it was warping the other numbers. My final numbers are TP 240/HIE 32/PP 1830.
Currently 240 makes a lot more sense than 270 if I was to truly make an hour effort. I’ve learned with my stint with XERT that the very high HIE is being utilized to “cheat” intervals and higher wattage at short intervals can end up skewing the FTP calculation; much the same way a ramp test would get skewed if extreme anaerobic power is being recruited to do the lifting.
My current AI FTP on TR/Garmin/Join (trialing several) is 270… My concern is this ---- This training FTP seems to work okay if the intervals are shorter and punchier bc obviously I can rely on the anaerobic engine. But if I was to do lets say a 2x20 or 2x30 sweet spot or longer sustained threshold intervals; it would be grueling and likely I will end up leaking over into an energy system not intended for that workout .
Is this intentional is the question??? Traineroad marks me as a “sprinter phenotype” so it must know I am somewhat this way. But I worry that this may be the secret root cause of my plateauing. Should I be moving to longer more sustained efforts with the lower/more realistic FTP setting to build my aerobic capacity properly? Or is it more effective to stick with the prescribed punchy and shorter intervals at higher power and then let the system slowly tailor me toward longer efforts?
At this point I have no idea. But I recently did two 2x30 sweet spot efforts in the last 2 weeks. Both average 220w off of feel. If we assume 90% of FTP and an 8/10 RPE, that 245 ftp seems like the more accurate based on real world sustainable 40-70 minute power. But if I get into shorter mixed intervals, it could end up underloading my capabilities also… A bit confused on what the way forward is at this point.
I originally had the goal of breaking 300ftp. This stagnation has been pretty discouraging considering last year I had a couple days read 291 on garmin. With the new kick in the gut from XERT showing TP closer to 240s; who knows.
