I often find this the most difficult thing to do in training - rest, as in take a day (or more) completely off. Well done!
Itās been a while since my last TrainerRoad interval(late March), however I want to ensure my FTP improves over the summer and provides an improved baseline for the coming winters plan.
So I pleased with this evenings effort and benchmarks my FTP against my indoor metric. My indoor FTP is currently 256 against 289 for outdoors. Iām of the mind to always use the lowest number as it encourages focus and consistency. Iām loving the improved fitness this spring and how that translates into real world riding with my club. So overall my strategy is to primarily use the club rides to empty my tank, commuting z2 and a weekly mileage of 150 to 170miles per week (10 hrs) and supplementing TrainerRoad intervals to benchmark/ensure progression.
While Iām not overly focused on a FTP or w/kg 
Iām trusting the process of consistency, compliance and completion, although i see 4w/kg as a possibility.( 3.4w/kg based on my indoor ftp)
Base & VO2Max & Speed
The plan was to work from home this morning so I decided to swim and forego the Thursday Hammerfest at Hains Point in Washington, DC. Weather looked iffy, too, with rain showers over night and high tide that floods the end of the point.
This workout is from one of the tri plans, but with a bit more base. 400 w/u, 200 paddles, 1300, 6 x 150, 6 x 50, 200 kick, 200 paddles, 200 c/d (yards).
Turns out that I got randomly selected for drug testing and had to come in to work anyway. Roads were dry, and this afternoonās showers are holding off. Guess I should have done the Hammerfest and swam tomorrow. 
Oh well.
Did 2x45 Minutes Sweet spot yesterday evening, should probably have startet with 2x40, Heart rate went well into threshold teretory on the second interval and the last 10 Minutes were really hard, Feel the legs today and had a bad night of sleep since I was just to wired after that effort. Doesnāt help that it slowly gets warm in the cellar, 19C isnāt to bad but 80-90% Humidity makes it feel worseā¦
Today is a yellow day, & after Altair (1h @ 55-56%) on a recumbent spinbike in the gym on Tuesday (a yellow day) made Wednesday yellow as well, I realised it was likely that even a moderate 1Ā½h ride today wouldāve put me in the red tomorrow. Rain is forecast here on the weekend, for both days. I decided I might as well put myself properly in the bin by doing the stretch endurance workout Big Mountain at the track.
Rather hard work. Almost regretted my decision. Power spikes & dropouts in the warmup & the final work period because I was commuting. I couldāve extended the warmup & cooldown to do the entire workout on the track, but then I wouldāve exceeded 100km & Iām playing with my cycling mates by not collecting the GF badge (yet). 
snipā¦
Ah, the joys of waiting for an AI model to learn where youāre at.
Meanwhile, Iām shifting focus: more on volume, less on intervals. Plus I have the RLGL slider on the conservative side, so my calendar is very colorful at the moment. How I feel on any given day is king though, especially how much or how little my glutes burn when I climb my ~15% driveway to start a ride.
Same sort of deal I think. Muscular endurance with a decent anaerobic contribution, just less so in sweetspot. That said, a 94% interval feels quite a bit harder to me than a 90% interval (surprisingly so), & theyāre both sweetspot.
Second or third week of a block, Warlow & Tray Mountain are kinda my go-tos for determining if my FTP is set correctly. Hard, but doable. Another interval might be possible but itād be all-out (or close to) by the end.
Did 2x55m of Sweetspot (0.9IF) as 2 ascents of the Alp de Zwift, in preparation of the Marmotte, Realized again that I need to set Trainer difficulty in Zwift at max 60-70% or else it gets stupid, even at that it forces me into lower Cadence then I would have outside on the same Gradients, and anything above will give me unpleasant slip on the Suito. After the last week not being the best with lack of Sleep because of sick kids, Iām pretty happy with this, feel like my TTE is good for the event.
After seeing my heart rate back down near normal levels on Tuesday whilst doing the 1Ā½h endurance workout Andrews on road, I decided to ease my way into some intervals, so I did the tempo workout Malakoff on the track, with about an extra 50 minutes of Z1/2 commuting.
(Mustāve hit the +10ā instead of +5ā at the endā¦ oops.)
No issues except some glute max soreness, but I have been doing some running & hitting the gym too, so no surprise. A little harder than I think it shouldāve been but some of the intervals were over sooner than I expected & I wasnāt counting down laps or minutes as I tend to do with something like Galena (3Ć20ā @ low 90s %), so I marked it moderate. HR didnāt hit 150 until somewhere in the third interval. Iām quietly confident that the ticker is back to somewhere near normal.
But the legsā¦ not so. I suspect Iāve lost 10 or 20 watts off my ftp thanks to forced inactivity in Z3/3Ā½/4/5, as reflected in my PLs, but Iām sure thatāll come back.
Next step I think is each week on rested legs go to 6Ć 13ā @ 80%, then 7Ć12ā @ 85%, then 7Ć11ā @ 90%, then 8Ć10ā@ 92%, then extend intervals again, maintaining TiZ.
Current focus is on endurance work, increasing TSS, with a secondary objective to arrest the decline in threshold capability / FTP, whilst recovering from the blasted SARS-CoV-2. Suggestions welcome; message me.
Congrats on the test result! I personally prefer the 20-minute format over the ramp & 2Ć8 too. My first couple of AIFTP offerings I was able to beat very shortly after, but AI caught up & since then in my 20-minute tests Iāve been putting myself through the wringer for one measly watt. I want to say, enjoy that ha-ha-I-beat-you-AI feeling while it lasts, but of course your mileage may vary.
Also note that the power target during the test interval is only set at 102%, not the 105.3% that would be required in order to maintain FTP. If you want a target that corresponds to maintaining-or-slightly-bettering your current FTP, you need to run the workout at 104%. (Set in the rest after the clearing effort, of course )
Yesterday was all endurance, & I decided it was about time I stressed the anaerobic fibres, but in a way that didnāt load up the lungs as much as in a typical suprathreshold workout. So today it was Knoutberry on the local climb, with the cadence at about stairclimber pace. Decided I didnāt need such a long cooldown, or warmup, or recovery after the warmup, so I skipped through them.
Marked as hard, because It genuinely was hard to do the workout this way, & today is yellow, & itās made tomorrow yellow too.
I hear you on that one. Likely done to prevent reverse engineering by users gaming the system & by competing platforms stealing IP.
Where thereās a reasonable correlation between an outdoor ride & a TR workoutās power profile I match it. A more elegant solution like the much-promised WLv2 would be nice, but manually matching will have to do the job for now.
Thatās fair. Iāve bitten off more than I can chew a couple of times. 
In my experience, the more an FTP rises in one test, the more the PLs drop, so I donāt think we lose out. Though it is pretty cruel straight after an FTP increase to be dished up 105% intervals that are longer than the VO2 max intervals Iād been doing the previous block. 
On both occasions that happened I wished later Iād traded the workout for a long subthreshold.
Another custom workout: 55% baseline with 10ā @ 72% every hour.
Iāve been amazed by those of you who can do 70-ish % for 8h, seems like the gold standard, & I estimate that it corresponds to a hilly 200k gran fondo. So I figured Iād start with 10ā of it every hour & gradually increase the duty cycle. Currently the power level for which 8h is TTE is a paltry 60%. 
Second ārestā interval was paused to massage a sharp pain that appeared in my left big toe, third had a loo stop, fourth I had to fix a puncture. Some neglectful or nefarious individual had left some 20mm aggregate on the track, & of course I didnāt think to remove it. 
Fifth rest interval I was wondering what would stop me this time 
but was okay thereafter.
Does AI FTP take into account Zumba classes? 
^^^ 
Back in the fish bowl to get an easy spin in without the 104F heat.
So apparently they converted the ceiling lights to blacklghts. Hard to adjust bike.
Then some ripped dude comes in for selfies and turns on the new disco lights. They rotate the colors.
Out of respect I snapped a pic before the shirt came off
Stepping it up to 83% after last time, & I worked it out that I could do 12-minute tempo intervals on my hill & 6-minute recoveries were long enough to get back to the start point. So I started the custom workout, warmed up, & on the way back down the hill I saw a friend I needed to give some bike parts to. So I ducked home, put them in a backpack, & headed out again to find him. Canned the workout because it was then going to be too late to do the whole thing, because I was expecting someone at my house about two hours later.
Realising that my lungs & legs had coped sufficiently with a 6-minute suprathreshold effort two days ago, I thought, threshold should be okay now, so I loaded up Warlow.
Got to the end of the third interval, realised that I only had one more productive interval in me, certainly wasnāt interested in suffering for a fifth, so I canned it after four. Deleted & associated the strava upload with Warlow -1 which is essentially what I did anyway.
Targets were 287 (under) & 332 (over).
Given that this was done on fresh legs & I can normally manage the 5th interval with a little bit of fatigue coming into the workout, I suspect my FTP has dropped by 10w since last estimated.