FTP shenanagins

[BikeNY]

A brief browse of this thread makes me glad I have no idea what FTP is...

[Wayne77]

Originally Posted by ergott

I'm almost there. I can do 4w/kg for 20+ minutes, but best hour so far is 3.7w/kg. I still think I can get closer this season. Still barely out of winter right now.

wasn't even my PR up Alpe, I ramped up effort then ran out of mountain
https://www.strava.com/activities/2193965623/overview

Similar experience here...I hit an FTP PR going up Alpe du Zwift. 309 Watts. I wasn’t trying to PR, I was just super amped, felt good, and once I hit the base of the climb I was really warmed up and some magic happened and that little voice in my head just kept yelling at me to go harder. For some reason I was able to. Maybe it was the music I was listening to, the burrito I had the night before, good sleep, I have no idea. I do a structured FTP test 3-4x a year and I’ve never been able to hit above 297W. I’ve had a handful of Training Peaks ‘new FTP threshold detected’ 20 min efforts during short intense races north of 300W however.

My problem is consistency. I can never get those once in a while ‘ready to kill it and keep killing it’ days to coincide with a race. They always seem to occur during rides where I went into the ride not specifically expecting some monster effort.

I’ve also done everything by the book leading up to a race...nutrition, proper taper, sleep, scripted to the nth degree race morning routines, then started the race feeling like something special was going to happen only to have the race turn into a run of the mill meat n’ taters Cat4 mid pack effort. Meh.

So my takeaway from all that is that there are so many variables layered on top of by-the-book-training that I haven’t figured out yet. So this year I’m going to stop overthinking it, obsess much less about numbers, and just try to have fun. We’ll see if that nets out to overall better racing...but regardless...at least I’ll be having more fun.

[Wayne77]

Originally Posted by bigbill

I quickly discovered this too. My rides go into my Strava and for fun I'll look and see how my 28,346 ranked sprint stacked up against the top 10 and see that they are all tied at 52 mph. Then there's the guy who did the 5.6 mile hilly loop in 12 minutes. My best sprint on Zwift was at 990 watts but some guy still went by like I was standing still. I compete against myself and so far I'm winning.

I don’t pay attention to W/kg on Zwift. It takes all of 5 seconds for someone to go into their profile and bump their weight down. Weight doping. If that gets people off, that’s their deal. All I know is when I do the occasional Zwift race, my personal numbers are real and there’s a good chance a lot of the other guys at the front are racing legitimately as well...at least their HR seems to support that. I walk away from a Zwift race feeling every bit as destroyed as I do after a real race. The way I look at it is some of the best race training is to race. So Zwift offers that and I find it immensely beneficial relative to standard interval sessions. Others may feel differently but it’s been a good way to incrementally improve my race fitness beyond just focusing on FTP.

[joosttx]

Have you tried Whoop to dail in your recovery? It maybe worth a shot.

Originally Posted by Wayne77

Similar experience here...I hit an FTP PR going up Alpe du Zwift. 309 Watts. I wasn’t trying to PR, I was just super amped, felt good, and once I hit the base of the climb I was really warmed up and some magic happened and that little voice in my head just kept yelling at me to go harder. For some reason I was able to. Maybe it was the music I was listening to, the burrito I had the night before, good sleep, I have no idea. I do a structured FTP test 3-4x a year and I’ve never been able to hit above 297W. I’ve had a handful of Training Peaks ‘new FTP threshold detected’ 20 min efforts during short intense races north of 300W however.

My problem is consistency. I can never get those once in a while ‘ready to kill it and keep killing it’ days to coincide with a race. They always seem to occur during rides where I went into the ride not specifically expecting some monster effort.

I’ve also done everything by the book leading up to a race...nutrition, proper taper, sleep, scripted to the nth degree race morning routines, then started the race feeling like something special was going to happen only to have the race turn into a run of the mill meat n’ taters Cat4 mid pack effort. Meh.

So my takeaway from all that is that there are so many variables layered on top of by-the-book-training that I haven’t figured out yet. So this year I’m going to stop overthinking it, obsess much less about numbers, and just try to have fun. We’ll see if that nets out to overall better racing...but regardless...at least I’ll be having more fun.

[benb]

Originally Posted by joosttx

Have you tried Whoop to dail in your recovery? It maybe worth a shot.

Had to look at what this was... $18/month and up for a proprietary HRM wrist band and software that claims to predict your recovery state mostly based on Heart Rate Variability.

Doesn't sound like the best deal knowing what we all know about wrist HRM monitors and motion based sleep monitoring.

I would feel way more confident trying something like that without the fairly hefty monthly fee and knowing the data/algorithms were public and had been vetted by top coaches.

I'd never do that over paying for an actual coach.

[Wayne77]

Originally Posted by joosttx

Have you tried Whoop to dail in your recovery? It maybe worth a shot.

Interesting. Thanks for the heads up. I’m a sucker for this sort of thing. It actually seems like a pretty sound concept. I do agree that there are downsides to wrist based HR monitors, but they apply to accurate HR tracking during intensity workouts. However, they are very accurate during sleep and normal daily activity. The use case here appears to apply much more to those metrics than what is going on during a workout.

In any case, I went ahead and signed up more out of curiosity than anything. There is a good upside if it works out and at a minimum the sleep tracking / activity monitor aspect will provide some value regardless of whether it nets out to improved recovery and performance gains. Tracking of resting HR has many overall general health benefits beyond just athletic performance. My general feeling on tools like this is that there are many ways to skin the cat, ie there are undoubtedly other ways to get similar metrics, but the mechanism itself (in this case a device with an app) can also be a driver. For some people, this delivery approach may add zero value...for tech nerds like me, maybe it’s a good way to get one in the right mindset (being more mindful of sleep, resting HR, etc)

I’ll likely post another thread on experiences after I’ve had it for awhile.

FWIW, I also wouldn’t do this over paying for coaching services or even investing in a good power meter.

[redir]

A few months ago when I started Zwift winter training I did their FTP test and pulled a 3.9kg/w. It is a 20 minute test ride and they take your average wattage and multiply it by a fudge factor to estimate what you could do for an hour. I honestly doubt I could hold 3.9 for an hour. So yeah, it seems a bit off to me too.

Besides that I wonder what the value for FTP is in road racing anyway. I can see it being important in TT's or of course something like the hour record. Probably important in cyclocross too. But in road racing there is a lot more to it. I think in road racing 5 minute and 20 minute efforts are more important for things like bridging gaps and breaking away.

[benb]

I don't know why they'd be applying a fudge factor instead of the standard value, isn't it 20 minute power * 0.95 according to Coggan, etc.. ?

This is the same thing I don't get with Strava not using the established formulas and instead coming up with their own thing that approximates the standards.

One other thing about funky #s. I had my PM break in 2016 and the ride it broke on I was immediately suspicious, but if you didn't notice right away or the failure was more subtle you could think your FTP/#s were creeping up. Mine broke in a way that made it look like I was making about a 30 watt gain. 30 watts is not particularly subtle to me but I could see someone missing it I guess.

[R3awak3n]

/\ yeah I don't think their FTP test is any different than any other ftp tests

[redir]

I just didn't remember what the number was so I called it a fudge factor. I still think I can KILL myself for 20 minutes, get an FTP value and not be able to ride that for an hour. I've not tried it though and I would not look forward to trying it either

[ergott]

Originally Posted by redir

Besides that I wonder what the value for FTP is in road racing anyway.

It's only real value is in creating workout zones for training. If you aren't training intervals in designated zones there's no reason to bother.

[Joxster]

Originally Posted by BikeNY

A brief browse of this thread makes me glad I have no idea what FTP is...

Its the level of hurt you put yourself in for an hour, just before you puke and fall off the turbo. A good test is 6kg and 20mins before you can see again

[redir]

Originally Posted by ergott

It's only real value is in creating workout zones for training. If you aren't training intervals in designated zones there's no reason to bother.

Ok I see. I guess I could also see it as a tool in say an hour long CX race. If you know you can pull off 300 whats for one hour then you can watch that number as you race and make sure you keep to it. Of course my guess is that people would produce more then their FTP under the stress of a race and so it could actually be a hindrance too.

[ergott]

Problem is you can't look at your computer in a race like cyclocross. You can only analyze after.

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[mtechnica]

Originally Posted by redir

Ok I see. I guess I could also see it as a tool in say an hour long CX race. If you know you can pull off 300 whats for one hour then you can watch that number as you race and make sure you keep to it. Of course my guess is that people would produce more then their FTP under the stress of a race and so it could actually be a hindrance too.

What I had in mind while making the thread was that it seems like people rarely if ever hit their supposed FTP for an hour, so I’d agree it’s not a good idea to bank on being able to ride your FTP for an hour if it was derived from an effort lasting less than an hour. I agree with what other people have said though about shorter efforts being potentially more useful to quantify, I guess to me being able to see your full power curve would be the most helpful, however once again people often seem to base their power abilities on their best performance which could be more or less than what they’re capable but almost certainly less since in a race you probably won’t be completely fresh.

I agree also that the power profile and FTP are mostly useful for training, and useful to a much lesser degree for monitoring your performance while riding.