FTP test road vs trainer

[T-Mobile]

Some background, I just upgraded to CAT 4 and I have just started training with power. My first 20 min FTP test I did on the road, I avg 267 for 20 min so 95% of that is 253 which is my 60 min FTP (correct me if this is wrong). I have done most of my twice a week 2 X 20 FTP intervals on the trainer at 90% of my 60 min FTP (227 watts). Training wise I'm doing a really fast 2 hr group ride/race with my team once a week, 3-4 hr endurance rides on Sat, one active recovery day and one total off the bike day and one day a week I will do a one hour unstructured ride mainly just go out and if I feel good I will go hard and if I'm tired I will back it off, here in a few weeks there will be a weekly mid week crit series that I will be doing and I will be replacing some of my Sat endurance rides with some upcoming road races in July, Aug and Sept.

My question is, should I do the FTP test on the road or on the trainer and should I be doing the FTP intervals on the road or on the trainer? It is much easier to try to hold a constant power output +- 15 watts on the trainer as opposed to the road which with changing wind and grade my power seems to fluctuate a lot more so when I have tried FTP intervals on the road I end up trying to stay higher power outputs so that my average will be closer to where it needs to be. Thanks in advance!

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Unless you plan to race on the trainer I'd suggest doing both your FTP testing and when possible your L4 training on the road. Sure if you lack the terrain or uninterrupted roads for long intervals or the weather is awful it makes sense to do work on the trainer but I'd work on ways to smooth your your outdoor power through gearing, cadence and route selection if possible.

 

[tonyzackery]

Dave, of course, knows what he's talking about. If you have at your disposal, I'd suggest doing your intervals on a low/medium grade (3-5%) hill of at least 10mins. in duration/length. This will even out your power output versus doing them on the flat...

If you must do them on the trainer, make certain you're on the hoods at the very least - preferably in the drops - and not on the tops of your bars. Replicating your fast position indoors will facilitate power transfer outdoors when you're going hard in a race...

 

[T-Mobile]

Thanks Dave! I'm not disagreeing with you, I have read a lot of your posts and I know you are one of the more knowledgeable people on the forum but for doing 85% FTP intervals why would it make a difference if they are done on a trainer or done on the road. If you can hold that power output wouldn't the results be the same?

Thanks again Dave.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

IF you can hold the same power indoors or out then the training response should be similar. Probably not exactly the same but at least similar. But many folks struggle to hold the same power indoors as they do outdoors given steady uninterrupted terrain so for these folks you might be talking about training at 85% of a lower number indoors vs. outdoors.

For instance based on your preferred FTP estimation method you might establish your FTP outdoors on steady terrain to be 280 watts but indoors on the trainer it might be 260 watts. So are you talking about 85% workouts being performed at approximately 240 watts or approximately 220 watts? There's plenty of debate as to whether those indoor workouts that hurt just as much provide the same training stimulus as the outdoor workouts performed at higher absolute intensity and if you have to do the work indoors due to lack of decent training venues or lack of steady terrain or terrible weather then it's all theoretical and you do what you can do. But if you have the choice and the training venues it makes sense to do the work where you can sustain the higher intensity not to mention doing the work where you'll also be building bike riding skills.

Don't get me wrong, I do plenty of trainer riding and when I lived in Wyoming I spent 7 to 8 months every year training indoors. But given the option and ice free roads I'll train outdoors when I can as my power numbers are better, I enjoy the rides a lot more and more time actually riding the bike translates to better bike handling skills including foul weather riding skills which helps a lot now that I'm living in a place where rainy races are pretty common. I still do plenty of trainer riding and encourage the athletes I work with to ride their trainers when weather or lack of daylight or even lack of training time in busy work schedules encourages more efficient use of training time, but in the end we race outdoors so it makes sense to do a fair amount of our training outdoors on bikes that actually move.

But yeah, as you said if you can do the same work at the same level indoors or out and your bike handling and riding skills are pretty highly tuned then there's not a lot of difference and if that let's you get the work done in a way you can't outdoors then by all means go with what works.

-Dave

 

[T-Mobile]

Dave,
Okay, I agree with all that you said. I live in Northern Utah so there are a few good climbs that I can do my FTP intervals on. the reason I asked the question was I suspected outdoor training would be better and I enjoy it a lot more but this spring has been crazy weather so quite a few of my rides have been moved inside.

Side note, I have just started doing regular intervals training due to the new powertap, all my training for the last two years were fast group rides when I felt good and slower 1 hour rides on the days my legs were tired and long endurance rides on Sat, most of my training was geared towards racing LOTOJA which I will be doing again this year. For a CAT 4 guy just starting power based training is a FTP of 253 good?

 

[daveryanwyoming]

For a 70kg Cat 4 rider an FTP of 250 watts should be enough to get you in the game but don't expect to ride away on the long climbs. For a 60kg rider the same FTP is really strong and an 80kg cat 4 would probably want to focus on flatter races with that FTP. Definitely think in terms of watts per kg instead of just watts. I suspect you've seen this: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/power-profiling.aspx

You've got to take those category labels with a grain of salt, they're meant as examples not a hard reference as to exactly what it takes to ride in any particular category. IMO, there's also some irony because the less skilled, lower category riders often need more power to race competitively than cagey higher category riders with a lot of race experience. If your skills aren't highly tuned or you do too much work or dole out that work poorly you often need some extra power to cover those shortcomings. And in the end racing is about a lot more than just power so FTP is the ticket to entry but you've still got to race well.

FWIW, my peak 20 minutes from my fastest LOTOJA came in at 3.7 w/kg with 4.1 w/kg for 10 minutes and 4.6 w/kg for the peak 5 minutes of the race. That was in the Masters 45+ field in '07 and the winners of our race set a new course record for all categories, all age groups that year (they got away from most of us on Strawberry Pass only a couple of hours into the race). The complete 200+ miles of riding came in at only 2.6 w/kg for a sub 10 hour time but that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't made it over the passes with the pack. According to my WKO+ logs my FTP was ~4.1 w/kg at the time.

-Dave

 

[T-Mobile]

I just retested my 20 min FTP. I was able to avg 297 watts for 20 min which makes my 60 min FTP approximate 282 watts. I did the test on a mountain pass instead of flat rolling terain like my first test. I'm assuming the large improvement is due to increased power but also a better test.

 

[T-Mobile]

Another question, I'm tring to beat my LOTOJA time from last year of 9:46:07. Do you think I should spend the bulk of the year trying to get my FTP as high as possible? If so are 2X20 at 85% FTP the best way to do that, retesting about every 4 weeks?

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Well my best LOTOJA time was only four minutes faster than your time so there's probably not a lot I can tell you but since ya asked...

If I were prepping for LOTOJA again I'd focus on FTP first and overall workload in CTL as my next priority.

How you do that is subject to debate, but yes it would typically include a couple days a week of focused Threshold work. Those days could be 2x20s or working up to 3x20s, 2x30s, 1x60s or a number of variations on the theme but all targeted at racking up a lot of quality time with sustained efforts at 90%-95% of FTP or better. On my other days I'd think about some longer rides with as much Tempo pace as I could manage, perhaps some feisty group rides once a week for some punch and high end work and perhaps a longer ride on one weekend day to build overall workload and CTL.

I didn't do a lot of long rides during the years I raced LOTOJA and it didn't seem to hurt me but I've had pretty good luck adding a longer day at least once every couple of weeks. I still try to accumulate an awful lot of Tempo time or above during the longer days so they're not classic LSD rides but I sure like the way it rounds out the schedule and I'm convinced it's helped me in my racing this year even though I haven't done any races over a few hours long. If I was doing LOTOJA again I'd do at least one of these long and fairly hard rides every two to three weeks. If you search old threads on this subject I wasn't a big fan of LSD riding for long race fitness and I'm still not if it means long easy miles but fairly long days ridden with a lot of quality really seem to have helped me so I'd keep some of that in the mix.

What I wouldn't do is focus on ride volume over ride quality as many of my Jackson friends prepping for LOTOJA typically did. I'd hit quality first and volume at reasonably high quality secondly but wouldn't just ride long days if they weren't also ridden with some focus.

That's how I'd approach it and yes FTP will be really valuable both to get over the harder sections up front with the leaders and because higher FTP translates to better preservation of your limited glycogen stores at sub maximal intensities. IOW, higher FTP also translates to better endurance at more moderate paces and that's crucial for getting through a 200+ mile race.

YMMV,
-Dave

 

[T-Mobile]

Okay, basically I'm doing the same training I did last year but adding work to raise my FTP. Last year I did not train with power so I just rode hard when I felt good and backed off on the days I was tired. As far a LSD, I think I'm in aggrement with you, I don't like the classic LSD training, basically what I would do is most every staturday, starting in June I would do about 60 miles with lots of climbing at a slightly easier pace than my normal rides but not too easy and then I would progressivly build up my distances from there. I usually don't go much beyond too many 100 mi training rides. I was talking with Cammeron Hoffman (I'm sure you know who he is) and he said that in his LOTOJA training, he rarely did training rides over 100 mi. I know of a lot of guys that put in 100 - 140 mi rides but I don't know what other training during the week they were doing.

After looking at the power profiling spreadsheet, my 5 sec and 1 min wattts/kg are really weak. I have always known that my sprint is weak, most critieriums I'm in the mix of the top 5 at the final lap and usually lost a position during the sprint. I have never worked on my sprint becasue my focus has always been LOTOJA and just doing the work to make sure I'm there for the finish. I'm not a huge crit fan so I'm not really worried about my sprint right now but when should I stop doing FTP intervals and start working on sprint training? How do you keep your FTP up when you start focusing on training for sprinting? I'm assuming that you still do maybe one FTP interval a week.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

It's hard to argue with Cameron when it comes to LOTOJA, he's got that race dialed. But that's definitely the way I see it as well, FTP comes first and some long rides are great if you can do them with quality but just plugging away long slow miles or riding a full 10 hours in training isn't necessary nor a good idea for most folks.

I probably wouldn't do a single day of focused sprint training to prep for LOTOJA, if you're lucky enough to come to a close sprint after 206 miles of riding in the mountains then do what you can. But you touch on either what's very cool or very difficult about bike racing. You can't train it all, all the time. There's reasons beyond genetics that some folks shine in TTs, others in crits or hilly road races, some in multi day stage racing, etc. You've got to pick and choose to some extent and can't train everything all the time at the depth you'd like. So if you want to do well in some mid season crits you'll probably want to work some short fast intervals to prep for the speed and the last lap positioning and your sprint to finish the job but those things aren't likely to help you much during LOTOJA and you'll have to cut out some other training to fit it in or at least to recover sufficiently between your hard days. Personally that's where I find the feisty group rides useful, they're a good way to get some L6 and sprint training in without dedicating full training days to those systems that and some racing where you contest the primes and the finish are a good way to get speed work and pack finish experience.

There's no perfect plan that works for everybody and fits everyone's specific race goals but it comes down to identifying your own strengths and weaknesses, setting A and B race goals, looking at your calendar and figuring out what to work on and when to work on it and then making appropriate tradeoffs. But yeah, in general for most folks I'd keep a day per week of focused Threshold training regardless of whatever else you decide to work on. It's a pretty rare rider that can't use a bit more FTP. But what you do on your other core days is debatable. If LOTOJA is really your prime goal then I'd keep focusing on FTP and CTL. If you've got some crits or fast flatter road races or short time trials on your A/B list then I'd include some work specific to your needs for those races but you won't be able to do it all so you'll have to pick and choose to some extent.

-Dave

 

[An old Guy]

This is a 9-10 hour race. And you are trying to do a little bit better.

A flat tire ruins your day. A bit of wind or rain or even sun ruins your day. Some guy decides to not work as hard as last year and again your day is ruined.

----

If you believe that your 1 hour power is 95% of your 20 minute power, then you should believe that your 9 hour power is 95% of your 3 hour power. 3 hour power is something you can measure every week.I would work on bringing up my 3 hour power. I would also do enough long rides so that 200 miles was a ride with no surprises. Back to back 100 mile days.- morning and then afternoon, might be useful.

If your time is really important, bring a group of guys who are willing to work with you for the time you want.

 

[Felt_Rider]

An old Guy, I have to say as someone learning that a lot of your posts baffle me. I do not have enough experience or knowledge to debate, but I do have to spend some time as if there is some sort of riddle about some of your posts.

"Back to back 100 mile days - morning and then afternoon" "Bring a group of guys"

Might as well look for cyclists that are paid to cycle. Who else has that amount of time available to train?

For how many consectutive days? At what intensity?
How is that split up? 100 mile days - morning then afternoon? Is that 50 in the morning and 50 in the evening?
But regardless wouldn't one be forced into LSD in order to keep the effort low enough as not to go above a certain TSS for the day and the accumulation through the week?

 

[packfill]

I understand the logic and the pleasure of doing the work outside rather than on the trainer, but do admit that it is pretty hard to find a good spot to do 1x60 or other long threshold workouts. Should I stress less about the formula and just think of it as doing as well as you can toward the objective? I tend to get a lot of trainer time b/c it is done very early in the morning as that fits my schedule best. I also like it b/c it is efficient -- this string did get me thinking about cycling is more than riding the trainer though.

So, the question is, when moving to more outdoor time, do you just accept the lack of precision that you can dose compared to the trainer? (BTW it took my compulsive self a good long while to accept that the training levels really aren't distinct separate levels and needing to stay in them precisely, so.....).

 

[tonyzackery]

At the end of the day, precision is not the key - the stress placed on the body is. Know the general area of intensity (L2, L3, etc.) you want to be in, know the general amount of time you need to spend in that area, and go do it. Don't fall into the 'paralysis by analysis' trap. IOW, as you've discovered, your body's adaptative mechanisms are not so precise to know the difference between 300w and 310w intensity, or 2mins. and 2m15s in duration. However, your brain (aka perceived exertion) will definitely tell you when you're going hard enough or have gone long enough...

FWIW, 90% of my intervals are conducted on the trainer and I think I'm doing alright in my races relative to my peers - definitely not losing any ground.

Stress your brain less, stress your body just enough - then rest and repeat. And never lose sight of the fact that you get fitter while you're resting - as long as you've done the proper (don't read this to mean the "exact') amount of work beforehand...

 

[T-Mobile]

Old Guy, no disrespect but I totally disagree on doing 100 mi back to back and such long rides that a 200 mi is a piece of cake, I know guys that have tried that in prep for LOTOJA and they end up over trained and burnt out and really don't do all that well in the race. Maybe if I didn't have two kids, a full time job, a wife working on a Masters degree, and other obligations I could ride a lot more, or if I were 24 and a big money pro but then I wouldn't be racing local races, I would be overseas racing.

I do agree that one, even small problem during a race that long will mess everything up, basically it takes all day to win that race and only a split second to lose it. I am racing on a team with several other strong CAT4 guys and we all plan to work together to get good times so I won't be alone like last year.

Besides, what is the point of training for a race and not trying to improve your time or finishing position? Last year I got on the podium in 3rd for the CAT5, looking at times, I know the podium is a long shot in the CAT4 but shaving off 15 min to race a sub 9:30:00 is a goal. There is a good chance that I won't beat my previous time but I have to set some sort of goal.


Tony,
Thanks for your input, that all makes sense, I do admit that I sometimes get too caught up in the numbers and data, but I'm an engineer so it's in my blood. I end up doing intervals on the trainer just because sometimes I don't have enough time to get to the place where I can do uninterrupted 3X20 min intervals because I have a finite amount of time to train a week, about 10 hours and I want to utilize it the best I can, so driving 30 min to a good climb where I can do 3X20 FTP intervals and then drive 30 min home cuts too much into my time. However, if I do have the time I will do them outside and all my other training is outside as well. I really hate the trainer but sometimes it's the trainer or nothing.

 

[Felt_Rider]

I was looking at the 2010 LOTOJA finishing times and it looks like if you can at minimum repeat the condition you had last year in combination of good team work as you mentioned you could be right there at your goal. With however many you have in your team working together and everyone being near equally prepared it will be interesting to see how it turns out for all of you.

 

[velomanct]

Wattage on the trainer is not equal to wattage on the road. IMO it's harder to hold 300w on the trainer than on the road. The resistance is just different. And that was with a Kurt Kinetic road machine (fluid). No matter what the duration, wattage on the trainer was always lower, even sprints.

 

[doctorSpoc]

As Dave has said.. outside is preferable... specificity or training is important.. you're going to be racing outdoors on undulating terrain, bumps, wind etc.. so you might as well get as used to that as possible... but as a busy person like yourself.. i have a wife, a 4yr old and a 2yr old and full time job.. you have to be as efficient as you can with your training, whatever it takes. if you can get more on bike time or any time at all by doing a trainer workout then for me that's what i'm going to go. to maximize your indoor training power get as big and powerful a fan as you can.. i've found that cooling is the biggest factor by far in doing outdoor power numbers inside.. i struggled with this until i got a honk'n industrial fan to do my indoor training.. now i don't see a difference in indoor and outdoor number.. the higher the ave. power numbers for your intervals the better the adaptation, not the amount of pain in putting out those numbers..

As Tony said.. don't get too caught up in the number.. ask yourself.. why do you even need to know your FTP? why test it? for me testing is wasting time because you need to taper a little bit for it etc... this chews into valuable training time.. you've done enough intervals to know what intensity to do them at.. and if you haven't figured that out your body will tell you in a hurry.. and your FTP is approximately the power you routinely do for 20min intervals.. that's as good as you need to know that number.. your training is your testing.. every day you do an interval you are testing.. i can't find a good, practical reason for formal testing and some good practical reasons for not doing and that's why i just don't do it.. can't see the purpose and time is too valuable to me to be wasting it on formal testing..

and i'd say work on your threshold power primarily.. again it's an efficiency thing.. that's they intensity that's going to give you the biggest gains/per unit time.. i do that almost exclusively all winter long and in season all week long and then add in longer 3-6hr workout(s) on the weekend.. i've found the there are adaptations that occur from doing workouts of >3hr that you are just not going to happen with shorter FTP workouts.. but you don't need to to that every day.. i've found 1-2 times a week is fine.. i generally do my longer workouts in a group, but carefully modulate my effort in that group to get a proper workout from it... i'm just not going to be motivated enough to go out and do 5-6hrs by myself...

oh... and uphill and flat FTP intervals will yield different results.. you will find that you will be more motivated on the hillclimb than an the flat and will result in higher numbers for the hillclimb.. i try to do all you intervals on the exact same location or minimally same terrain so i can see true progress...