Would love your help on sustaining a greater percentage of FTP on longer rides

Here is Joe Dombroski’s file from a stage at the Giro.

On day 6 of the Giro when he tackled Mount Etna, Dombrowski had a total TSS score of 298. During this stage, Dombrowski was pivotal in helping to protect Michael Woods early on, as well as on the lower slopes of the cimb. In the opening 4km of the climb, Dombrowski produced 380w, 5.25w/kg for a 10 minute effort as he kept in contact with the leading group.

First, note the massive build of his CTL, with a staggering increase of 60 points over three weeks (from 132 to 192). This is a ramp rate which we see rarely in any other events or training blocks; only in a long Grand Tour like the Giro can riders meet such demands.

The monstrous CTL ramp rates come down to Dombrowski’s weekly TSS®. Logging approximately an 1800 TSS per week for 3 weeks is something most of us would fail to achieve even for 1 weeks a feat only sustained by the talented and elite of the sport.

Note the IF of .82 for a stage of the Giro and the subsequent TSS. I would say maybe retest your FTP?

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I would hope on a the bike leg of an ironman you don’t go higher then what he did, no way could I run after putting down a .8 IF ride. A lot factors into IF, of you have a hilly ride your IF is higher. I doubt most rr have a high IF due to you sitting in, your just not doing a lot of work.

Majority of sweet spot work outs are .8IF.

Me personally After the 3 weeks of ssbhv I increased 20w on ftp but in those 3 weeks I
Had 4 work outs a week with IF of .8.

Hey try SSB and see how you do on it

I posted a leg of the Giro for a guy who turned himself inside out, enough to get an article written about his effort on training peaks. His IF was .82. Did you happen to see the hills Joe rode in the Giro lol. :metal:t4:

Workouts, not 4 hour rides holding .8++ the entire time. Sorry, the math doesn’t add up but I wish you the best.

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I’ve got a handful of rides like this (>3 hours and IF > .85), and modeled FTP in WKO is a watt or two from field tested FTP.

Here’s two hard group rides, with significant solo riding time:

and

and a solo ride:

back when I was training outside using Strava/CTS Gran Fondo intermediate plan and doing:

It is possible as an average new-to-cycling masters 55+ cyclist with enough motivation and the right training.

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IF is based on NP, and it’s pretty easy to do a long hard ride with IF over .85, especially with short punchy hills. Much harder to maintain an avg power > 85% FTP for that long of a ride.

Strava uses weighted avg power which isn’t NP but similar. I don’t know the details but for me it tends to be somewhere between NP and avg. Thought OP might be looking at strava, unless you’re in the habit of telling each other your avg powers after a ride…

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I will say it again, no one is saying it isn’t possible but it’s not the run of the mill kind of thing you see for most cyclists well trained or not.

It looks like this is the hardest sweet spot workout in the TR catalog which is 3 hours at .86 IF.

Rockhouse is 3 hours at .87 IF but not SS.

Disaster is 4.25 hours at .79 IF but a mix of everything.

Strange nothing higher, could be a coincidence.

Nobody is claiming it’s run of the mill…

I disagree, you said it was possible for an average cyclist. I don’t think it’s fair to the OP or others that read this to make it seem like the average cyclist rides around at .87 IF for 4 hours. The average cyclist absolutely does not if their FTP is set correctly. You are either above average or your FTP is set too low.

Judge and jury. Ok I’m guilty of being not average. My data is clearly wrong. You win. Peace and train on.

I think the issue is that you are posting a handful of rides and implying that you are average and anyone can do it. I posted the histogram from intervals.icu with a red arrow showing how far in the right tail his riding buddies end up in with a sample size of thousands of rides from thousands of riders.

I am saying it’s not that common and his buddies are obviously really freaking strong (above average, yes???) or maybe their FTP’s are set too low which would inflate their IF’s.

When everyone piles in and says, “look at me I’ve done it!” it does perhaps skew the results in a way that sets false expectations.

I will stick with my opinion that it is not easily accomplished (see the bell curve, the Giro Training Peaks file, the trainerroad catalog of workouts) unless you have some above average chops or perhaps need to consider an adjustment to FTP.

No offense intended by saying you are strong or above average.

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No offense to TR but offering up the TR catalog as evidence is not convincing. The plans are mostly targeted at time crunched by all appearances.

You can train fatigue resistance and muscular endurance. I’ll agree not many try going long (the 20-min interval ‘revolution’), or use century rides to test themselves in prep for longer events.

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I think the intervals.icu data is more compelling personally. In any event, you have done some big rides at high IF’s, congrats. I’m sure your advice will be helpful to the OP in doing the same. :+1:

In the first reply on this thread jarsson posted a link to one of my posts on going long.

I’m sure discouraging people from aiming high will be helpful to the OP. :+1:

And regarding intervals, I had to spend time pointing out issues to David in order to get intervals.icu to give useful estimates of FTP. After he fixed a few things intervals.icu finally matched up with WKO and Xert on estimated FTP.

I guess I don’t follow. I said your advice will be helpful to the OP in doing the same. What am I missing here?

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Sorry if I misunderstood. It has been a long day. Peace and train on.

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I’m on the ‘there’s probably something off with your buddies numbers’ team on this one.

I race endurance and ultra endurance, and generally have a pretty darn strong ability to hold a high % of FTP for 3-5 hours, and way longer… And I pride myself on that and use it tactically, knowing that if I can hang with the leaders through 2-3hrs, I’m gonna have an advantage at the end. I browsed briefly and I think the only 3+ hr ride I’ve done in the past 6+ months with an IF over 0.8 was climbing Haleakalea at 320W for 3:15…and that’s only if you discount the flat ride to the bottom which lowers the overall IF. I’ve done 300 watts for 5hrs straight inside, I’ve done an everest where every climb segment (9hrs worth) was done at 305 watts (too bad I don’t weigh 140lbs like keegels). I did a sub 9 IM last year. I have a ton of 3-5hr rides in the 0.75-0.78 range, and I can/have done a 0.85 for 3+hrs in a race…but that would typically require a few rest days before and that last hour would be pretty rough.

Unless your friends are p/1 who for some reason ride stupid hard on fun weekend rides, their numbers are wrong.

Either way if you wanna get better at riding at higher percentage of FTP you need to spend more time there. More and longer SS riding. More long, hard rides where the last hour is really testing.

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Ride outdoors with a power meter that reads high, and train indoors with a smart trainer that reads low. :innocent:

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I’m working on getting back to that, and have nowhere near your power. FWIW here is a ride from 23 days ago where I ended the ride early to join the family for a hike. So not quite 3 hours but IF was holding around .84 until I decided to figure out parking before the family arrived by car:

Was fighting a wicked headwind for the first hour. Like you said, ride long distances, push the pedals hard, and keep stops to a minimum. On that ride the stops were just under 4 minutes before arriving at the park.

Just did a threshold test 3 days ago on Saturday, and made it 65 minutes before surrendering:

FTP is pretty close to 243. I could maybe bump it up a handful of watts, hard to say for sure :man_shrugging:

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the input and sorry for the delay in replying.

From what I understand:

  • Actually, my own performance is fine, but SS and Z2 could well bump this up more
  • My friends might well have numbers that are off. Always possible with PM’s I guess. Myself and the two I’ve shown as examples here all use Assioma pedals [me dual, them single-sided], so could be a -1%/+1% difference plus greater strength on their lefthand sides, but I guess as a percentage of FTP it would come out in the wash anyway?
  • Mr 289w WAP/297w NP could well have a higher FTP by now! Honestly, he’s unbelievably gifted - just over a year from starting to ride, no structured training, just riding around and he does 34kph on a 100km course with 1550m climbing.
  • I use the Stravistix add-on in Strava, so I automatically see the NP from friend’s rides - we don’t proactively share those numbers :rofl: Although I am nerdy enough to enjoy such a conversation!

I think a potentially big gap in my specific training is low cadence muscular work. My chicken legs could well benefit from a bit of strength work. Is it beneficial to do this within the SS intervals or would it be more beneficial to do them separately at higher power?

Thanks guys!

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