Rubbish FTP test result



grahamspringett

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Feb 26, 2004
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Last week I was doing my threshold efforts and finding it almost too easy. The same goes for the VO2 efforts. So I thought I'd retest.

I had to go to Sydney for a few days so there was 4 days off the bike. I tested yesterday and I'm ashamed to admit, I bombed out after 12 minutes.

I did the same protocol as in The Book and felt happy with my 5 minute effort. But soon after getting into the 20 minute FTP test I felt awful and struggled to hold my existing power level.

In my defence it was 32 degrees, but I was really angry at myself for quitting and for being rubbish at cycling when only the previous week I was almost struggling to hold the power down!

I got home and analysed the work and even my 5 minute effort was 1 watt higher than when I last tested 2 months ago.

I can only assume the hot weather and the 4 days of doing nothing but driving and running around Sydney did me no good.

I'm going to do some SST and threshold work this week then maybe take a couple of easy days, then re-test.

Surely 2 months of pretty solid training would've done something???
 
grahamspringett said:
...I can only assume the hot weather and the 4 days of doing nothing but driving and running around Sydney did me no good....
Yep, both of those probably contributed to your tough testing day. Hot weather is real tough, but I'd definitely avoid testing or racing after multiple rest days. It's pretty normal to feel blocked up after a few days of total rest and the reason folks advocate an openers ride the day before an important event.

I struggle with best efforts after total rest days and struggle even harder if I've had several total rest days in a row. I'd suggest taking rest days two days before your testing(or races) and making sure you do a wakeup ride the day before you test. The wakeup ride should include some short sections up to FTP and beyond but be easy enough overall to leave you fresh the next day. Before races I like to do an hour ride that includes a couple of 5 minute FTP sections and a hard jump or two but overall I come off those rides feeling pretty fresh. Then I restock my glycogen stores right after riding and make sure I get a good warmup on race day.

Give an openers ride a shot before your next test, you might be pleasantly surprised.

-Dave
 
grahamspringett said:
Last week I was doing my threshold efforts and finding it almost too easy. The same goes for the VO2 efforts. So I thought I'd retest.

I had to go to Sydney for a few days so there was 4 days off the bike. I tested yesterday and I'm ashamed to admit, I bombed out after 12 minutes.

I did the same protocol as in The Book and felt happy with my 5 minute effort. But soon after getting into the 20 minute FTP test I felt awful and struggled to hold my existing power level.

In my defence it was 32 degrees, but I was really angry at myself for quitting and for being rubbish at cycling when only the previous week I was almost struggling to hold the power down!

I got home and analysed the work and even my 5 minute effort was 1 watt higher than when I last tested 2 months ago.

I can only assume the hot weather and the 4 days of doing nothing but driving and running around Sydney did me no good.

I'm going to do some SST and threshold work this week then maybe take a couple of easy days, then re-test.

Surely 2 months of pretty solid training would've done something???
First of all, I agree with daveryanwyoming-testing after four days off is a recipe for disaster, as is testing in hot weather. Do some openers next time, and test in the morning or evening or on a cooler day.

also, despite the recomendations of "the book," I would avoid doing the 5 and 20 minute test on the same day-if I do the 5-minute test right, I can barely ride tempo, let alone do a 20 minute max test.
 
Cool days are going to be pretty few and far between down under now. But I reckon an early morning recce without the 5-minute effort will do from now on. It's a killer!

And yes, the days off were kinda imposed on me - I get antsy taking so much time off unless it's for illness. I'll do some SST this week and try again next week. But I guess I should've done some sort of riding before testing. I thought I'd be good and fresh. Still learning after all these years!!
 
whoawhoa said:
"...Also, despite the recomendations of "the book," I would avoid doing the 5 and 20 minute test on the same day-if I do the 5-minute test right, I can barely ride tempo, let alone do a 20 minute max test."

Although I can see your point, wouldn't separating the test make the 20m*95%=FTP estimate somewhat invalid? I was under the assumption (nothing more) that the 95% is based upon a 20-min value that one would get when doing all the other intervals; i.e. the design of the test requires that you not 'cherry-pick' a 20-min test value.

For example, after a test session (per 'the book'), I can almost always within 2 days (or so) afterwards get a significantly better 20-min test value if I don't do all-out 1-min and 5-min intervals beforehand. This 'cherry-picked' 20-min test value would thus be something less than 95%, but if use 95%, it would (hypothetically) over-estimate my FTP.

I guess Andrew Coggan would have to answer to be sure (or maybe this has been discussed here before), but it seems to me that his estimate of using 95% for a typical person must be based upon some consistent test regimen. I do realize that what is 95% for the typical person might be 90% for someone else, but absent knowing one's specific relationship, it seems like keeping the test consistent is important.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

J\V
 
J\V said:
....I guess Andrew Coggan would have to answer to be sure (or maybe this has been discussed here before), but it seems to me that his estimate of using 95% for a typical person must be based upon some consistent test regimen. I do realize that what is 95% for the typical person might be 90% for someone else, but absent knowing one's specific relationship, it seems like keeping the test consistent is important....Any thoughts?...
Yep, it's been discussed here quite a bit before by lots of foks including Dr. C. You'd probably get more consistent results for yourself by sticking to a standarized protocol, but basically the 95% of 20 minute approach is an estimate just like every other method of guaging FTP. And yep, according to Monod and Scherrer your best 20 minute effort may be 95% of your FTP or it might be 92% or 98%.... Pre-exhausting yourself with a 5 minute effort should diminish the impact of your AWC, but it'll still vary from person to person. Check out this piece on Monod CP testing if you haven't already: http://www.velo-fit.com/articles/critical-power.pdf

And here's a good short list of ways that Andy recommends for estimating FTP: http://www.twowheelblogs.com/2-old-2-go-slow/how-to-determine-your-functional-threshold-power
notice he doesn't list the 20 minute *0.95 method....

In fact the second best way to estimate FTP based on his list is the power you can regularly produce in your long intervals. IOW those peaks you get several days after testing might be a better estimate of your FTP if you can hit those numbers fairly consistently from day to day.

-Dave
 
grahamspringett said:
.... But I guess I should've done some sort of riding before testing. I thought I'd be good and fresh....
I was thinking of this thread today as I struggled to finish a set of 20 minute efforts at 240 watts this morning. It's the start of my training week and I've only been back at regular training for a few weeks now. I was thinking damn I've fallen way off since the end of the season..... Then this evening I did another session and felt pretty good churning out 280 watts, both sessions indoors on the same trainer with the same torque zero'd PT wheel. I felt like hell this morning after two days off but felt great this evening after a full day at work.

Anyway, retest yourself the day after an openers ride. I bet your numbers will look better.

-Dave
 
I've had a similar disappointing experience in the past few weeks. At the end of a 3-week block of training I was doing 3 X 15's in the 320's and one of them into the 330 watts. I took my rest week after that and thought that it would be a great time to do a 20-min test to see where I'm at. No good, 10 minutes into it I was averaging 318 and falling fast. That's it. I quit. Felt like hell. So I thought "maybe I just had a bad day", and continued with my training plan.

Well, After a week of struggling to keep a wattage that should have been easy, and zeroing my powertap every time, I figured my powermeter had to be screwed up. Sure enough, thankfully, it was. I did the stomp test which showed it to be at about 5% margin of error. Plust, the test mode showed it to be significantly off, which I should have checked a lot sooner. Right now I'm just wondering where my power will be at when I get my calibrated powertap back from the factory.

Just something to check before you get all depressed like I did.
 
J\V said:
Although I can see your point, wouldn't separating the test make the 20m*95%=FTP estimate somewhat invalid? I was under the assumption (nothing more) that the 95% is based upon a 20-min value that one would get when doing all the other intervals; i.e. the design of the test requires that you not 'cherry-pick' a 20-min test value.


J\V
You are correct. Apologies, i should have elaborated. I think the 20m*.95 is a pretty poor estimate, weather you do a 5 minute test before or not. By doing a 5-min and 20-min test on separate days you can calculate critical power which is a whole lot more accurate. And as a bonus, you get a power estimate across a wide range of durations.
 
whoawhoa said:
You are correct. Apologies, i should have elaborated. I think the 20m*.95 is a pretty poor estimate, weather you do a 5 minute test before or not. By doing a 5-min and 20-min test on separate days you can calculate critical power which is a whole lot more accurate. And as a bonus, you get a power estimate across a wide range of durations.

I realize that a 60-min test is the best way to do it, but I'd assumed that since the OP was using his 20-min test to estimate FTP, my line of thinking applied to your post.

I guess my question assumes that the '95%' is the mean of the bell curve of values that were used to formulate the hypothesis, and thus if one is using a 20-min test to estimate FTP, it should be done using the same protocol used to derive the 95%. Unless of course one knows their unique value (be it 90% or 97%), in which case that value would be unique to the type of 20-min interval performed (i.e. during a full power test, or 'cherry-picked', as I put it).

Unfortunately, 'race-pace representative' 60-minute efforts are difficult to replicate on trainers, which is (if I remember what I read correctly) the reason that the 20-minute test protocol was derived. I recently went through a bone density study in which I had to do three 60-minute TTs within 2 weeks. My three values only varied from 255 to 266 watts, all the while drinking this gnarly orange liquid while vampires sucked blood out of me every 15 minutes. But I digress... LOL

Thanks for the input!
 
Went out with the Saturday group this morning and after the initial lumpy bits which always kill off the lesser riders (and that's before we even leave town properly) I tootled up to the front with the intention of getting some threshold work done rather than sit in at 120W for kilometer after kilometer. I was putting in a fair effort, even managed a stilted conversation with one of the local strongmen (animal on a bike and a very nice guy he is too).

Then we split into groups for the burn-up home, which was hard going.

Anyway, analysing my ride showed me that I have a new 20min best effort which I am now going to use as a new benchmark. I've gone up from 218W to 232W. Not a huge leap but hey, progress is progress.

So I don't think I'll be doing another test on my own for a while!
 
grahamspringett said:
... I've gone up from 218W to 232W. Not a huge leap but hey, progress is progress. ...
Don't know what sort of time period that was over, but a 6% power gain is nothing to sneeze at. And from your description it doesn't sound like you were at your limit either.

Nice job!
-Dave
 
grahamspringett said:
But I guess I should've done some sort of riding before testing. I thought I'd be good and fresh. Still learning after all these years!!
I did the exact same thing last weekend. :eek: I tried doing a CP20 after 5 days off. Despite feeling great for the first 5 min, I had to quit after 13 min. Incidentally, I went on a team ride the following day and matched my previous PB for 20 min NP. The effort included a 17.5 min climb and 2.5 of spinning. Had the climb been longer I would've had a 20 AP PB as well. Live and learn!