What is your TTE for this highest ever FTP? Remember FTP is two dimensional, power, and how long you can sustain it (TTE).
Im not sure where I get that info? My FTP was auto generated from TR about 10 days ago.
Speed is a by product of a lot of different things….power is just one of them.
One of the most obvious issues at play is clothing and weather differences. You are wearing more clothing and it is bulkier in the winter than summer. So that alone will impact your speed. Winter weather also tends to be more blustery and windy, which again, impacts speed.
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Think of it like this… you are training more intensity. Just because you hit a personal best in a 10k run doesn’t mean you are going to also get a PR in the marathon. They are two different events.
Right now you are training for a shorter event. I’d keep doing the long ride but wouldn’t worry about the pace of it right now. You may want to shift the focus more specifically to you event later but if the goal,is to raise the FTP the long rides are not the focus.
Can you post your training calendar for us to see? That always helps provide better responses.
Not sure how i can do that?
Ride at your FTP and hold it as long as you can. If it’s not brittle fitness, you can expect to hold for at least 35-40 mins or so.
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It’s really easy to fall into a zone trap with TR, where they build you up with VO2 “the zone” instead of VO2max “law of the jungle every man for himself”. If you don’t do your own specificity work creating race winning intervals or hard maximal intervals that map to the terrain you want to be racing on… Well you may risk showing up with amazing ability to repeat 50w below V02 max over and over in 60s intervals, but no real ability in 5 minutes full gas, which is a major indicator of performance in one day racing.
Something called the compound score, you should try to maximize your best raw 5 minutes power and then expand that to include best raw 5 minutes after 2000 calories burned.
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I’m specifically training for is a 6 day 1100km 27000m elevation event… I think i need raw diesel power to keep me going up the 34 hills, some of which are TdF epics?
Depends on your access to fuelling but yeah definitely not a one day race.
The TR plan is increasing my FTP… which I assumed (naively perhaps) that this would manifest itself in speed and durability … but my 100km rides at the moment would suggest differently.
When was the last time you actually took an FTP test? If it’s been more than a few months, I would do that, or at least do a workout like Lamarck. This will help you to see if you’re even close to being able to maintain the FTP you’re assuming is going up.
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Something something training is testing and testing is training. Or the best predictor of performance is performance itself.
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Ive not done one for a long time. I did try a while ago but using rollers I found it impossible to reach my limit as I got too unstable … then i tried outside but couldn’t find a route where I could do it due to road conditions… so Ive relied on the AI predictor.
In that case fire up a TR workout that’s 2 × 20 at FTP (Gray +5, maybe?) and give it a shot when reasonably fresh.
If you can complete it without turning yourself inside-out, you’re golden. RPE of 8 (maybe 9 in the last couple of minutes of the second interval).
If you’ve not done any FTP intervals over 8 minutes in living memory, maybe try a 3 × 10 or a 2 × 15 first, just to get a bit of practice in.
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Aside from what others have said, I’ve been fastest when my CTL is higher, even when my “FTP” is lower. So I’d look at your CTL/volume when you were fastest and see how that compares to now. When my FTP was stagnant for years, increasing my CTL broke me through my plateau. YMMV
If your volume is significantly lower you can have good power for shorter durations (FTP), but struggle as the hours continue. This is the TTE or brittle fitness others have mentioned. TR plans won’t address this, you’ll need to schedule it yourself.
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Yeah, I often hear people say “a rising tide lifts all ships”, but I don’t find that to be completely true with FTP. FTP is a great metric and it does lift all ships to some degree, but we tend to get caught in a trap of using FTP as a direct proxy for performance. My FTP doesn’t really move much (particularly during the season), but there is a huge difference in the power I can produce for longer durations depending on how trained I am. I find that CTL is a better metric when it comes to measuring my ability to perform. I kind of think of FTP as a baseline, but CTL will tell me whether that FTP can be expressed in actual performance.
Also, riding on a trainer inside is not the same as riding outside. Even if the fitness is there, differences can affect performance. Wind conditions, temp, grade, roughness of the road, body position on the bike, etc. can all contribute to different performance dynamics that might translate to lower power. I have spent much more time indoors this year due to weather and have pushed a lot of volume with my CTL higher than it’s ever been this time of year. I knocked out a 4 hour training ride indoors at .85IF without going too deep, indicating good durability for this time of year. A few days later (and well rested), I had an outdoor gravel ride where I struggled to hold .77 for a little over 3 hours. It was a windy warm day, on rolling terrain, ~50% gravel, just things that made it much harder to make consistent power compared to spinning an ideal steady cadence on the trainer with fans keeping me cool. You can build excellent fitness and durability inside on a trainer, but for me it takes a bit of outdoor riding before I start seeing similar numbers outside.
Finally, you only seem to be comparing speed outside with prior efforts. I assume you don’t have a powermeter on your outdoor bike since this would be a good point of comparison to your indoor performance. Ideally, a PM would give a much better view into what’s going on. That said, the ultimate goal is to be fast (not just produce power) outside, so there’s nothing wrong with looking at speed. There are so many variables that I’d never compare individual rides, but look at trends over weeks/months if that’s possible. One of the first things I’d look at if seeing a speed dropoff outside is body position on the bike. It’s easy to get into lazy habits of riding in a very non-aero position when training indoors. Maybe you are seeing a 10w increase in FTP from your indoor training while costing yourself 15 watts outside with a less efficient riding position. Hard to know without power numbers for the outside stuff.
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Thank you for your reply… I do have a power meter on my bike so I’ll have to look closer at numbers not just speed.
Oh, man you have to compare the power numbers. As others have already pointed out – weather, clothing etc can greatly affect speed at similar power.
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I’d echo too many variables of outside that affect speed. And also, you’re not really trusting the training plan if you’re judging it in March when it would be building towards June?
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You will be fine! Trust it.