I would go with 305. Why? Because with lower FTP you will train a little more efficient and go longer and you will shed some fatigue in the process. It is only 5% difference so even if its lower you still get a lot of adaptations. If you recover and you return to normal feel of threshold just up it.
Thanks, lads. I’m fine with w/e it is because it is what it is. I race, and while FTP is crucial, there is SO much more at play and I’m not chasing some vanity number aka “vFTP”. I’m just trying to raise it as much as possible.
What I find rather interesting is that @ ~305w my FTP is only 74% of my best 5-min power and 47% of my best 1-min power. That seems rather low, no?
Not high enough. But really, I couldn’t tell you as my 3+ hour rides tend to be all endurance pace around 190-220w.
Here’s a 60K gravel race at the end of May coming off the heels of a really nice VO2max block. This was well-rested with a positive TSB and feeling fresh. I finished 3rd out of 250 and felt like I was flying.
Most definitely. I’m sort of hitting a cap at around 4 hours right now with my once-per-week long ride. I’ve been working with that as well as supplementing it with a mid-week 2 hour endurance ride.
Moving forward, my plan is this:
Tues / Thurs / Fri / Sat are the best days for longer rides so I’m still playing with the structure of these weeks. I might opt for my first FTP day to be on Monday, then a medium (2hr) endurance ride on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, FTP on Thursday, SS or another medium endurance day on Friday, and a long ride on Saturday.
Week 1 (@ FTP = 95-98% of FTP)
Day 1 (Mon): Endurance Day (1.5-2 hr)
Day 2: FTP Day (3x15 @ FTP or over/unders)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: FTP Day (2x25 @ FTP
Day 5: Sweet Spot (1x45 @ 90%)
Day 6: Endurance Day (2.5-4 hr, depending)
Day 7: Off
Week 2 (@ FTP = 95-100% of FTP)
Day 1: Endurance Day (1.5-2 hr)
Day 2: FTP Day (3x20 @ FTP or over/unders)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: FTP Day (2x30 @ FTP)
Day 5: Sweet Spot (1x60 @ 90%)
Day 6: Endurance Day (2.5-4 hr, depending)
Day 7: Off
Week 3 (@ FTP = 95-100% of FTP)
Day 1: Endurance Day (1.5-2 hr)
Day 2: FTP Day (1x60 @ FTP or over/unders)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: FTP Day (2x40 @ FTP)
Day 5: Sweet Spot (1x75 @ 90%)
Day 6: Endurance Day (2.5-4 hr, depending)
Day 7: Off
Week 4 (Recover)
Week 5+ (CX racing and FTP maintenance)
Not really, my 5 min power is 420 and FTP 315-320, so 75%. It is 60% of my 1 min power but my short power is non-existent.
Can you tell this to my girlfriend?
And could you also help me to find a friend, because 5-6h alone is not so much fun. My mind becomes a little bit sad around 4h and I like loneliness.
But to be serious do you do 5-6h rides on the trainer also? Or you leave those longer rides for outside?
So this is next step for me and something I need to work on. My mental capacity on the trainer usually stops around 3:30 for an endurance ride. I like 3h rides but with some work during them (let’s say 4x15@FTP or 3x20 O/U). And implementing the 3h work worked wonders in my second year of training. But the more I train, the more I see the relation of Z2 (and volume) to my performance on my bike. Maybe I only need to find something more interesting for my mind to focus on.
Ok sorry for asking questions but knowing your abilities I am quite interested to improve mine (learn from the best :)) - with those 4h rides do you opt for higher power or do you rather focus on time without generating too much fatigue? So let’s say 0.65-0.7 IF? Probably you do this by RPE only but I am curious how it lands usually as a regular Z2 ride.
But it is always interesting to hear the athlete side of things and how it works in practice on a living person. I know that everything is highly individual but for me technical/coaching side of cycling training sometiems is more interesting than cycling itself
Do you find having the smart bike to help with long workouts? Or are you doing them on a real bike on a trainer?
Yes, although you need not over test. A complete power test (e. g. 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 20 minutes) will take something out of of you, think of it as doing 3 ramp tests in terms of efforts, so I don’t think it makes sense to do that too often.
Instead, you can also use your training to validate your targets. E. g. before a hill climb TT, I like to do long steady state workouts to simulate the race, something like Gray (2 x 20 minutes at FTP). When I do well on those workouts, I rest assured that I am in good shape. This is also how I gauge whether my FTP in TR is set at the correct value.
Based on the numbers, I would start with 315 W and see how that works. An important reference is your 413 W 5-minute power, I think.
See above. I forwent any VO2/map testing today since I did that a few weeks back. Today was a hard session, no doubt about it.
Doing an outdoor TTE test is really tough, I had to make a couple of unfortunate stops. It’s equally as difficult to perform one in a room that’s 75-80° ambient (garage) so I work with what I got.
305-315 feels right. Admittedly I’m pretty disappointed since I did 327w for 45 min back in February (when I was very fresh) coming off nothing but endurance and tempo in December-January. Lots of work done for zero improvement in threshold—it is what it is.
Cheers!
I’m confused by this: if you focussed on endurance and tempo work, this is exactly what I would expect. If you do this, you raise the tail end of your curve below your FTP, but less so your FTP, at least not the way FTP is used in TR. (I’m writing this, because FTP can be defined in different ways by different people. Common ones are lactate threshold 2 and your “hour power” since time trialists manage to hold their FTP for 50–60 minutes.)
That’s why you need a purpose when training, otherwise we can’t say whether you are doing better or not. Different types of training will affect different energy systems, i. e. it will target different parts of your power curve. Also, I would not judge fitness just based on power, depending on what you do, repeatability may be crucial. So for example, while a shorter team sprint left me gassed and I put out less W for way shorter last year, this year I was able to take out my watt hammer for way longer and after a short recovery could hammer again if I wanted to. My FTP was within 1 W. I gained fitness in a way that isn’t immediately obvious in my power curve.
You wrote that your normalized power was 327 W, but your average power was 307 W. So the actual number you should use is 307 W, not 327 W.
Thanks, I appreciate your input thus far, but I think you’re misreading me or I’m being confusing.
My normalized power for today’s TTE test was 322 with an average power of 307w for 46:38. I did a TTE test back in February that yielded 327w avg and 327w NP (done indoors). I’m simply lamenting at the fact that I had my best TTE test coming off no threshold work, just tempo, endurance and weekly strength training last fall/winter. I was a lot fresher back then too with much less intensity in my legs.
Re: current FTP…
I’m slighted that my threshold has dropped despite a really nice VO2max block in April & May, along with some of my most focused endurance riding ever. However, massive gains in 30s-5min power, repeatability, and anaerobic capacity have been realized, so not all is lost. I’ve got a lot of good race-fitness. I just anticipated a nice bump in FTP from the VO2 work, but that seemingly hasn’t happened.
Ah, ok, you are speaking of a different TTE test. Sorry about that, but you mentioned quite a few data points and I lost track.
You wrote that you had to make “unfortunate stops” during the TTE, which must have lowered your average power, not least because you had to accelerate to speed. That’s one of the difficulties with doing very long efforts outdoors, there are very few stretches of road that allow you to do uninterrupted 1-hour efforts.
I still maintain that part of the problem is that you did not set yourself clear goals. You are bummed, because you seem to only look at your FTP and not at the “massive gains” you did on shorter efforts. If the latter is your goal, your training has been a success.
IMHO unless you just train because training is fun, you should set yourself productive goals to work towards. That sets expectations, tells you what workouts do to in what order, etc. This season I chose to work on my short-term power just to shake things up, two years of rolling road race plans are enough. Plus, I want to try crit racing (this weekend is my first race!).
Secondly, I set myself different goals riding indoors than outdoors. Indoors TR tells me what to do (for the most part). But outdoors I try to e. g. work on my pacing or be disciplined and stay in the power zone I want to work on that day. Pacing is a skill that needs to be honed, for example, and cannot be duplicated indoors, because outdoors you should ride to preserve momentum or use momentum to your advantage.
Yeah, this thread has blown up into something I hadn’t intended! I’m even getting lost.
Well, I had/have goals and they are/were:
- Incorporate fall-winter strength training
- Execute a dedicated VO2 / race-prep block to be ready for my A-race at the end of May, and podium the race. Finished 3/250
- Focus on building a more robust aerobic engine via more Z2 work (historically I’ve neglected this, and focused on too much intensity around sweet spot or threshold) STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS
Coming out of May my goal was to pull FTP up from the bottom thinking I made some headspace given the big block of VO2 max work and an excellent spring race. However, illness and some summer vacations have made compliance less than optimal, but I’m trying.
Now I’m looking to hit a solid block (3 weeks, 6 weeks, I’m not sure yet) of FTP work leading into CX season (primary racing discipline) and hopefully grow the FTP along with capitalizing my increased anaerobic work capacity (something I’ve struggled with)
If all goes according to plan, I’m hoping to have my most successful CX campaign in the last 4 years of racing that discipline.
The goals are there, they just aren’t as defined as “work on short power”. It was more about getting in the best shape possible for my May race, which is the first race in about 18 months. After that it was let’s see if we can spring board off that fitness and realize some nice FTP gains.
This is what I mean, though: if you have an A race, you should try to find out what kind of efforts you need to be good at to compete. Podium on my A race is not an actionable goal; the word actionable is key. You should convert an outcome goal into several process goals.
What are the decisive points, e. g. is there a short climb? Do you ride a loop repeatedly or from A to B? What is your race strategy? Do you think your weaknesses will be limiters? From that I would set training goals. If you don’t have any limiters, you could work on accentuating your strengths, for example. If you think your endurance and repeatability are a weakness, you should work on that. But you don’t necessarily see the latter reflected in a raised FTP. Or even in a lifted power curve.
Secondly, the later you get into the season, the more you should worry about specialty training, which is not about raising your FTP at all, but prepping you for race-like efforts.
Nevertheless, it seems you did alright if you podiumed, congrants on that (especially out of a field of 250, that’s impressive!).
No doubt, I didn’t want to get more granular than I have. I knew heading into this season I would be well served by doing an extensive aerobic phase in order push out my ability to hold a high percentage of FTP for long (for me) durations. In this case 2-2.5 hour races. I also knew that I would have to be sharp toward the end, specifically for a couple of short 2-3 minute climbs, hence the intensive aerobic block leading into the race.
Still need to be more judicious about doing 3/4 of my weekly volume at lower intensity.
But if you asked me whether or not I had numbers (e.g. 500w for 4-minutes) I would have said “not really”.
Maybe more outcome than process oriented, but I definitely didn’t go about the process in a Willy nilly fashion.