15 Watts per Year?

Originally Posted by vio765

is raising my FTP by 15 watts per year a reasonable goal?...

Originally Posted by vio765

is raising my FTP by 15 watts per year a reasonable goal? i know there are several factors to play in this (such as genetics, recovery and training methods), but is this goal reasonable? of course, the body is not linear when it comes to improvement. for example, one year i increase my FTP by 5 watts, and the next year will be 20 watts. assume the following:

230Watts FTP
~700 TSS per week @ ~0.780 IF
~17-18% of total workout time is at Threshold
500 training hours/year
153pounds
1-3 FTP intervals per week
1-3 tempo (60-90min) per week
1 day in the gym
1 day off
examplary diet and recovery practices
5 TTs a year and 6-8 other races (mostly road)

let me know if you need more info

Originally Posted by rmur17

700 TSS at say 50 training weeks per year -> 35,000 Tss/yr. No issue at all with that - definitely a solid training load.

How many years have you been training in that manner (or what manner) to get to your current FTP? And what age are you? Those would be my first questions..

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming

15 watts per year sounds very conservative as far as goal setting given your starting point. Perhaps not if you're projecting out 20 years at that rate but you should be able to come up quite a bit from an FTP of 230 watts and 3.3 w/kg. Everyone is different so there's no way to know for certain, but 4 w/kg is a totally reasonable goal on the kind of schedule you describe and I'm talking about this season not three to five years out. My FTP has gone up by over 30 watts in the last month as I transitioned from indoor SST/L4 work to a five day a week outdoor schedule.

Your schedule sounds good with L4 and L3 work, but don't leave out some L5 work as well. I rest on Monday and then either sprint or do L5 work to start my training week and then follow that up with a day of L4/SST repeats followed by a longer L3 day, another rest day and then weekend stuff that could be races, group rides, more L4 or more L3 or sometimes just a long ride for the heck of it. I always feel like I could be doing more on this schedule but my FTP as well as power over shorter durations just keep rising.

Good luck,
Dave

Originally Posted by vio765

i train like 37 weeks per year (formal, rigorous training) and the rest is a transition period where i do a lot of yoga and some weight training. but i still ride about 200-300 TSS per week during the transition. i rode 2 years on a XC mountain bike (casually, socially, not competitively, but regularly). this will be my 3rd year of road cycling. the previous years werent very serious like this year. i am 28. i am guessing that last years FTP was 215-220 and the year before that was maybe 200ish. not sure (no powermeter!)

Originally Posted by giannip

Is this continually the same workouts every week or would you build for say 3 weeks and drop off for 1?

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming

My FTP has gone up by over 30 watts in the last month as I transitioned from indoor SST/L4 work to a five day a week outdoor schedule.

Originally Posted by Piotr

Can you elaborate? I'm very interested why I didn't increase 30 W over the past 2 months despite the indoor/outdoor transition.

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming

Well, I'm surprised as well, pleasantly surprised but I sure didn't expect a big jump like that.

I've got a few theories. One is that I was just a bit lazy indoors since it aint a lot of fun to sit still and stare at a fan for an hour at a time. Or put differently RPE is higher indoors and the suffer factor seems higher so perhaps I wasn't hitting my best numbers on the KK trainer. But I did stick with it for 5 months of Wyoming winter and I only had one or two weeks where travel kept me away from my SST and L4 sets.

Another theory is that I'm riding more days now that I'm outside. I balanced the trainer time with XC skating over the winter and raced a few ski marathons as cross training. I suspect I got some crossover benefit, but now I'm getting a steady 5 days a week on the bike so from a specificity standpoint I'm targeting the right muscles and right range of motion for cycling with all my workouts not just some of them. OTOH, I think I would have burned out trying to do 5 indoor trainer workouts a week and I love ski skating and backcountry skiing so those things kept me sane and may have given me some crossover benefit.

A third theory that has occurred to me as I started racing and doing fast group rides is that I just push myself harder when I'm riding with other fast riders. I'll dig deeper to bridge or cover a break or even taking my turns at the front. I don't think I ever had that kind of motivation on the trainer even on test days. Like you I came back and analyzed my first couple of race results and my NP numbers were way higher than anything I'd seen over the winter. I don't think they're NP busters since my histogram step down for a month of outdoor riding supports those numbers and my long L4 intervals are consistently within 10 watts of my new FTP estimate and that's assuming I'm going to do 3x20 or 2x30 and won't go all out on any of them.

Our numbers are pretty similar, I'm a masters racer these days and after more than a decade off the bike my license came back as a 4 on the road and 3 on the track so I've got to earn my way back out of the 4's all over again. Over the winter my FTP rose to 260 or so and NP for the first hour of my first race (a 2 hour hilly RR) was 284. I felt great in that race and never felt close to losing it, I moved up at will, rode at the front on climbs and attacked half a dozen times trying to spur some kind of action but they'd just chase me down and sit up. I still finished well even after letting myself get boxed before an uphill field sprint (the decade off shows there with poor tactics in the closing miles especially when we just weren't going very fast).

Since that race I'm consistently riding L4 repeats at 275 to 285 watts and have seen forty five minute to an hour long NPs in the low 290s. My histogram for the last three weeks has a dramatic step down at ~ 290 watts as well.

Anyway, I'm not sure how much longer my power will stay on the upward climb, but so far I'm very happy with the transition to riding outdoors. I'm riding a 3 stage omnium in a couple of weeks that includes a TT so I plan on putting my new FTP estimate to the test. I'll keep you posted.

BTW are you planning on riding the High Uintas SR or the Utah State 40K TT? I'm eyeing both of those races. I'm gonna be out of town for the Bear Lake RR, but that looked good as well.
-Dave

Edit: I don't think it's taper related since I only did a mini taper for those races, basically just 80% of duration while maintaining the same workout schedule and the same or even a bit more intensity. Also I've been able to continue hitting those numbers since that first race and have been building, not tapering during that time.

Originally Posted by Piotr

....Looks like your rise in FTP might be due to undertraining on the bike during the winter months. 1hr indoors for me felt like a day off .