Author Topic: FTP  (Read 31065 times)

Re: FTP
« Reply #25 on: 24 April, 2020, 04:07:34 pm »
...Particularly on the ramp test they would go beyond the indicated stopping point...

Not sure what you mean? Do you mean you get to the point you know where you won't be able to complete the next minute at the next power level and just smash out as much as you can in order to boost your best 1 minute power? If so that's just purposely abusing the protocol.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: FTP
« Reply #26 on: 24 April, 2020, 04:27:10 pm »
I’m at 237 at the moment which is about 3.25 w/kg. I find the latter much more of an accurate indication for the reasons posted upthread.

None of this makes me a great cyclist though. I am very average, enjoy fettling bikes and the mindfulness of long rides. Ive only been doing audax for a couple of years and I love it. I find there is a lot more to it than power and fitness.


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simonp

Re: FTP
« Reply #27 on: 24 April, 2020, 06:58:48 pm »
...Particularly on the ramp test they would go beyond the indicated stopping point...

Not sure what you mean? Do you mean you get to the point you know where you won't be able to complete the next minute at the next power level and just smash out as much as you can in order to boost your best 1 minute power? If so that's just purposely abusing the protocol.

You’re not supposed to stop because you won’t complete the minute. You’re supposed to ride to failure.

ETA: I just realised this is Wattbike rather than TrainerRoad. However in TR to achieve your current FTP you’d stop half way through the 20th minute of the test. Every second counts.

Re: FTP
« Reply #28 on: 25 April, 2020, 11:33:59 am »
I don't know if this counts as cheating, but you would get a slightly elevated score if you get to a certain power eg 340W, and think "I can't do a minute of this" and you do 10 seconds of 370W rather than however long you can hang on at 340W.

simonp

Re: FTP
« Reply #29 on: 25 April, 2020, 11:38:36 am »
I don't know if this counts as cheating, but you would get a slightly elevated score if you get to a certain power eg 340W, and think "I can't do a minute of this" and you do 10 seconds of 370W rather than however long you can hang on at 340W.

Sprinting at the end is specifically advised against in the TrainerRoad test, IIRC

Re: FTP
« Reply #30 on: 25 April, 2020, 11:48:13 am »
Plus if you can do a proper sprint at the end you are either not doing it right or have "Cat 1" against your name

Re: FTP
« Reply #31 on: 25 April, 2020, 11:51:33 am »
There's a difference between sprinting and just going over the suggested power.  Doing ramp tests on a dumb training using gears almost always ends in that sort of manner as you tie up and can't do the required cadence for the indicated power.

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #32 on: 25 April, 2020, 01:23:25 pm »
Did 1 minute at 415 Watt this morning... which is 6.1 W/kg...

Just thought I'd let you know...  :)

Re: FTP
« Reply #33 on: 26 April, 2020, 08:01:38 am »
Plus if you can do a proper sprint at the end you are either not doing it right or have "Cat 1" against your name

It irritated me when they told me my effort after 'riding' 50 mins of my hour was a fraction of when I started out.  Now I try to ramp it up a bit at the end just to show'em.   Last time it worked and no derogatory message appeared.


 
Move Faster and Bake Things

Re: FTP
« Reply #34 on: 26 April, 2020, 08:45:49 am »
I find that there is a lot of confusion over ftp , possibly due to the use of “ gaming” style on-line platforms. As an example, I’ve been having a play with Zwift whilst having too much time on my hands. I’m sure that the aficionados will know the ways around things better than me, but using it during a designated easy day, just to bimble around I find that the all-controlling machine has calculated a set of figures for me.

If you are using power to inform a structured trading programme then you have to be honest about your realistic power levels.

ftp is a zone guide, not an achievement or a target. I mentioned earlier some Wattbike users trying to get a big number. They then can’t keep in zone 4 for any reasonable time, so structured trying becomes unstructured.

Re: FTP
« Reply #35 on: 26 April, 2020, 08:49:23 am »

You’re not supposed to stop because you won’t complete the minute. You’re supposed to ride to failure.

That is the one reason you will never catch me doing an FTP test.

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #36 on: 26 April, 2020, 04:33:46 pm »
Not having the opportunity to measure it on a wattbike, I have set the FTP to 250 Watt on Garmin connect... it's probably a bit generous, but not by much (might be more like 240 W)

Did 90 minutes yesterday on the road (so junctions, ups, downs etc...) felt like a decent workout, 187 Watt average and 205 weighted, not the hardest I have ever done on the road, but 31.7 km/h average for a route with 7.5 mt of climbing every km suggests I wasn't hanging about and here is the breakdown of zones

7 = 4%
6 = 6%
5 = 5%
4 = 10%
3 = 18%
2 = 28%
1 = 21%

Does it sound about right or have I set the FTP way out? I am surprised that basically half of it is in zone 1 and 2, so little more power than turning in bed

Re: FTP
« Reply #37 on: 26 April, 2020, 05:58:54 pm »
Where have your numbers come from?  If it's Strava, then in my view, you might as well just pluck them out of thin air - they are never anywhere near those measured by my pedals. If it's a power meter, then just do a test.

If you want to get an outside estimate of your FTP and you have a power meter, go to the local 10 course that has the least interruptions/traffic, and try for a PB. You'll get a really good 20 minute power number you can multiply by 95% to get your FTP.

The time spent in Zones 1 and 2 is the reason why people say that you can do so much more work on a turbo. Most people don't work very hard going downhill, or coming up to a junction, or when they are having a drink or something to eat, and all that adds up to a chunk of the ride. Also, Zone 2 is not turning in bed - that's the sort of power you would use if you wanted to do a 5 hour ride.  It's probably somewhere between 130W and 190W if you have your FTP set to 250W. See https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005942786-Understanding-Power-Zones

pdm

  • Sheffield hills? Nah... Just potholes.
Re: FTP
« Reply #38 on: 26 April, 2020, 06:03:42 pm »
As above - you need a power meter on your bike to be anywhere near "accurate".
Also, Garmin Connect does, I believe, give you power/time curves on your activities when they are uploaded and viewed on the web site which are probably what you are after. Alternatively, if your rides are uploaded to Strava, view your activities on Chrome with the "Elevate" extension installed and set up properly - that will give you plenty of power data to confuse yourself with  :D

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #39 on: 26 April, 2020, 06:07:33 pm »
I do have a power meter... but Garmin Connect never adjusted the estimated FTP, so I did it manually... the zones come from the power measured and the FTP I inserted

A local 10 TT is a possibility, but they are all sxxt... one is along the A45 and the other is only marginally less lethal, even at this time.
I could plot one myself on some rideable A roads, I suppose...

Anyway, do the numbers look reasonable or bonkers?

Re: FTP
« Reply #40 on: 26 April, 2020, 06:43:06 pm »
Zones don't seem barmy. It would be interesting to see the plot of power vs altitude. It doesn't seem like a productive training ride, in terms of doing a bit of everything, but too much time at each end to be anything specific.

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #41 on: 26 April, 2020, 07:21:27 pm »
Zones don't seem barmy. It would be interesting to see the plot of power vs altitude. It doesn't seem like a productive training ride, in terms of doing a bit of everything, but too much time at each end to be anything specific.

Profile is undulated, some sharpish but very short bumps... I am only really interested in the 5-7 zones... kind of training for hill climb, so not bothered about FTP as such... just a reference for the rest...
I suppose reps would make more sense, but during lockdown and not having hills closeby it's difficult to do what is ideal... it's a case of making do

Pedal Castro

  • so talented I can run with scissors - ouch!
    • Two beers or not two beers...
Re: FTP
« Reply #42 on: 26 April, 2020, 07:47:54 pm »
I don't often ride outdoors with a PM but 2 weeks ago I did a 2.5h tempo ride at a fairly constant RPE with 74% of time in my Seiler zone 2 which is above LT1 but below LT2. Of the rest, 4% above LT2 i . e. Z3, 16% Z1 (endurance) and 6% Z0 (active recovery).

As far as power went, the time in each zone was:
Z1 25% (active recovery)
Z2 20% (endurance)
Z3 17% (tempo)
Z4 16% (FTP +/- 15W)
Z5 10%
Z6 11%

Make of that what you will but that's why for tempo (and endurance) rides I train to HR. When outdoors I will use PM for intervals less than 2' but that's not often.

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #43 on: 26 April, 2020, 08:01:24 pm »
I don't often ride outdoors with a PM but 2 weeks ago I did a 2.5h tempo ride at a fairly constant RPE with 74% of time in my Seiler zone 2 which is above LT1 but below LT2. Of the rest, 4% above LT2 i . e. Z3, 16% Z1 (endurance) and 6% Z0 (active recovery).

As far as power went, the time in each zone was:
Z1 25% (active recovery)
Z2 20% (endurance)
Z3 17% (tempo)
Z4 16% (FTP +/- 15W)
Z5 10%
Z6 11%

Make of that what you will but that's why for tempo (and endurance) rides I train to HR. When outdoors I will use PM for intervals less than 2' but that's not often.

OK, so that's 36% on Z4 and above, mine is only 24%, I probably got the FTP too high and as a result the zones are not quite right... I'll put it down to 240 W, which is probably more in line with what I thought it was

Pedal Castro

  • so talented I can run with scissors - ouch!
    • Two beers or not two beers...
Re: FTP
« Reply #44 on: 26 April, 2020, 09:01:31 pm »
The day before was a similar ride (2 circuits not 3) but only 1.75h so although 71% in the tempo HR zone 9% in Z3 and only 7% in Z0. That resulted in 42% Z4 and above. The shorter the ride the higher the intensity generally. Average speeds were very similar 18.32 v 18.25mph. Another 2.5h ride over exactly the same route 3 days later was 19.33mph with pretty much the same HR profile, a faster bike but no PM. Bottom line, it doesn't matter what you FTP is, all you need to know is, if you're going to ride to power, what is a suitable power that you know you'll be able to sustain for however long you're going to do it for. I find it much easier to do that via HR for anything longer the 10'. Ah, just remembered, I did ride the 2.5h to power to compare with the day before which was to HR.

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #45 on: 27 April, 2020, 09:03:56 am »
The day before was a similar ride (2 circuits not 3) but only 1.75h so although 71% in the tempo HR zone 9% in Z3 and only 7% in Z0. That resulted in 42% Z4 and above. The shorter the ride the higher the intensity generally. Average speeds were very similar 18.32 v 18.25mph. Another 2.5h ride over exactly the same route 3 days later was 19.33mph with pretty much the same HR profile, a faster bike but no PM. Bottom line, it doesn't matter what you FTP is, all you need to know is, if you're going to ride to power, what is a suitable power that you know you'll be able to sustain for however long you're going to do it for. I find it much easier to do that via HR for anything longer the 10'. Ah, just remembered, I did ride the 2.5h to power to compare with the day before which was to HR.

Roughly speaking, I am interested in 1 minute, 4-5 minutes and maybe 10 minutes, although the latter is hard to measure

So far, the best numbers I got are 6.1 W/kg for 1 minute and 4.8 W/kg for 4 minutes... I haven't got anything that could be called "my best" for 10 minutes...

Re: FTP
« Reply #46 on: 27 April, 2020, 09:12:21 am »
OK, so that's 36% on Z4 and above, mine is only 24%, I probably got the FTP too high and as a result the zones are not quite right... I'll put it down to 240 W, which is probably more in line with what I thought it was

I'm not convinced that riding the same and moving the FTP around is the right way to go about things.

Let's take a step back, and tailor your rides to what you are training for. Most hill climbs are between 2 and 7 minutes, right? That's VO2 territory, zone 6. It also gets you a great bang-for-your-buck in training, but it's easy to overdo it. (It is also an aerobic effort, so a big FTP is valuable for this sort of effort.)

The most common indoor VO2 rides are quite a deep square wave - minute on, minute off kind of effort where "on" is 120% of FTP, and "off" is 60% or so. Repeat a few times, have a 5 minute break at 60% and then do the whole set again. Do you have any small hills where you can just smash out 300W for a minute or more? It's easier to do longer intervals outside - doing a 30 second climb, turning around and descending and then repeating 10 times feels really daft. However, you say you have sharpish short bumps - if these are 30 seconds then that's what you have got. (Where are you if you don't have a 2 minute climb handy - I thought Oxford was flat but we have a few 5 minute jobs around here.)

You probably can't do more than a couple of these types of sessions a week without putting yourself in a hole (typically the TR build stuff does VO2 Tuesday, over-unders Thursday, sweetspot Sunday), so it's worth experimenting with a mixture of these (an hour or shorter to start with) and some threshold work (Zone 5) as well as ordinary rides of the format you posted.

S2L

Re: FTP
« Reply #47 on: 27 April, 2020, 09:48:35 am »
However, you say you have sharpish short bumps - if these are 30 seconds then that's what you have got. (Where are you if you don't have a 2 minute climb handy - I thought Oxford was flat but we have a few 5 minute jobs around here.)

Plenty of bumps of a minute or less... anything longer, well Burton Dassett is about 3 minutes and that's about 20 km away and Edge hill is about 4:30 minutes and that's about 25 km away...

So I can do both, even in the same ride, but I can't really go there and do reps, these days. I tend to use these as a test, rather than as a training, so heading there every 10 days or so to see if there is any improvement (there is).
I use the bumps for the zone 6 (or 7 depends how you want to call it) training... but I don't have a lot available to work in zone 5 for long enough, the kind of 260-300 W area

Re: FTP
« Reply #48 on: 22 May, 2020, 12:54:33 pm »
The day before was a similar ride (2 circuits not 3) but only 1.75h so although 71% in the tempo HR zone 9% in Z3 and only 7% in Z0. That resulted in 42% Z4 and above. The shorter the ride the higher the intensity generally. Average speeds were very similar 18.32 v 18.25mph. Another 2.5h ride over exactly the same route 3 days later was 19.33mph with pretty much the same HR profile, a faster bike but no PM. Bottom line, it doesn't matter what you FTP is, all you need to know is, if you're going to ride to power, what is a suitable power that you know you'll be able to sustain for however long you're going to do it for. I find it much easier to do that via HR for anything longer the 10'. Ah, just remembered, I did ride the 2.5h to power to compare with the day before which was to HR.

Seems right to me.

I don't have a HR monitor but I did the FTP test on Zwift and got 255w.  Then having heard that Alpe du Zwift was modelled on the Alpe d'Huez I thought I must try that (at first my level 5 didn't let me in). 

After attaining level 6, I had a go via the Sky Ride route. In my ignorance I was clearly trying too hard and also being too competitive, trying to draft riders who were really too fast for me.  I gave it an hour and decided I'd better pack before I overdid it.  Later the graph of my stats looked like a seismograph reading during an earthquake.

Two days later I set off with the strategy of keeping the power down to 200w for the entire ride.  On my setup it's hard to keep a precise power output so most sections I averaged 210 to 214.  After an hour I was feeling ok so I experimented out of saddle and got a peak of 391 for a few seconds.  Then it was back to the grind, by that point there was me and two other riders who both overtook me slowly.  Near the summit I was catching them again so upped the power to 360 and overtook them before the line.  Although my time of just under 75 minutes was long way off the current leader's 43 just finishing the climb was enough for me.  I'd averaged 205 watts overall (including a few cooling off kilometres) and my performance graph was far tidier. 

Still looking forward to getting back on real roads but also upgrading to a more advanced trainer for the winter.   
Move Faster and Bake Things

Re: FTP
« Reply #49 on: 22 May, 2020, 02:07:59 pm »
The day before was a similar ride (2 circuits not 3) but only 1.75h so although 71% in the tempo HR zone 9% in Z3 and only 7% in Z0. That resulted in 42% Z4 and above. The shorter the ride the higher the intensity generally. Average speeds were very similar 18.32 v 18.25mph. Another 2.5h ride over exactly the same route 3 days later was 19.33mph with pretty much the same HR profile, a faster bike but no PM. Bottom line, it doesn't matter what you FTP is, all you need to know is, if you're going to ride to power, what is a suitable power that you know you'll be able to sustain for however long you're going to do it for. I find it much easier to do that via HR for anything longer the 10'. Ah, just remembered, I did ride the 2.5h to power to compare with the day before which was to HR.

Seems right to me.

I don't have a HR monitor but I did the FTP test on Zwift and got 255w.  Then having heard that Alpe du Zwift was modelled on the Alpe d'Huez I thought I must try that (at first my level 5 didn't let me in). 

After attaining level 6, I had a go via the Sky Ride route. In my ignorance I was clearly trying too hard and also being too competitive, trying to draft riders who were really too fast for me.  I gave it an hour and decided I'd better pack before I overdid it.  Later the graph of my stats looked like a seismograph reading during an earthquake.

Two days later I set off with the strategy of keeping the power down to 200w for the entire ride.  On my setup it's hard to keep a precise power output so most sections I averaged 210 to 214.  After an hour I was feeling ok so I experimented out of saddle and got a peak of 391 for a few seconds.  Then it was back to the grind, by that point there was me and two other riders who both overtook me slowly.  Near the summit I was catching them again so upped the power to 360 and overtook them before the line.  Although my time of just under 75 minutes was long way off the current leader's 43 just finishing the climb was enough for me.  I'd averaged 205 watts overall (including a few cooling off kilometres) and my performance graph was far tidier. 

Still looking forward to getting back on real roads but also upgrading to a more advanced trainer for the winter.
If your 1hour power was 210- 214 then that’s your FTP.
Most accurate, and meaningful way to measure FTP is one hour, maximum sustainable power therefore average watts. That’s what the definition is.
Realistically, as long as you are within a reasonable figure, then your work zones will be accurate enough.