Well… that’s one way to spend 20 minutes of your life.
I do wonder if those 20 minutes actually reduce your life by like 40 minutes or something, given how hard they feel, and how much stress they put on your body.
Anyway, today was the day. I set myself the goal of doing an FTP test each quarter this year, though I can’t specifically find where I wrote that down. I’m not going to dwell on the review at this point, as that’s to come next week.
The point is I set myself the target of doing these FTP Tests every 12 weeks to measure my progress over the three month period.
Today’s plan was to, ideally, hit 240w or greater. This, I felt, would solidify what feels like good and steady upward progress recently.
Going into this one, I had the choice of either doing this today or yesterday. I had to take yesterday off work due to being forced to finish for Christmas, but then I don’t normally ride Fridays. As such I opted for today, but that was – in truth – partly because I simply didn’t want to do the FTP Test very much.
That said, I was feeling confident I could beat last Quarters FTP result, which was 236w.
Interestingly going into this one I did not know this. I hadn’t checked, and I had in my head it was 237w.
So with all that in mind, I actually set myself a target of 240w or greater.
I was aware hitting 240w would mean, being at 253w average for the 20 minutes. I had in mind I wanted to target 260w… which, alarm bells should have been ringing, is 110% of my current estimated FTP of 237w.
But again, I’m only just figuring this out after the fact, as I write this, rather than before hand.
I definitely feel 105% is a good uptick to aim for in future.
I opted for the longer FTP Test.
The reason for this is that this is the one I always opt for, and so it keeps it consistent.
Also the 20 minute warm up feels useful, and helps settle me in.
Truthfully today the 20 minute warm up seemed to last for ages, and that wasn’t a good sign given that I had a much harder 20 minutes ahead which would likely seem far longer.
After the 20 minute warm up, the 3 little ramps were easy enough, and then I got the 5 minute breather before the harder work began.
OK, so if the alarm bells hadn’t been ringing before hand, I should have adjusted my strategy after the 5 minute effort at 260w. That’s 110% FTP, and that felt absolutely killer.
I was questioning how likely it would be to hold that for a further 15 minutes, given I was very much ready to end it at around the 4.5 minute marker during that stint.
One useful thing I did do during that 5 minute effort was test my gearing with ERG off. I had planned to do this either Thursday or Friday, but again my whole vibe was like, don’t go near the bike… the bike means pain. So I skipped doing that, and so had to guess at the best trainer resistance to use. In the end I used Zwift Hacks to set it to 30%.
That’s far more accurate than the crappy little slider you get inside Zwift which doesn’t really tell you much of anything.
Just prior to starting the full 20 minute effort I took a short pee break. I mention this not to gross you out, but to say that I have done this, I think, on every prior test. So it’s fair, or fair enough for a 41 year old bloke who is doing all this for no good reason and not very scientifically.
Then it was back on the bike and into the fun.
As is now fairly standard, I went out way too hard.
I set up my gear to push out ~265w at 92 rpm. And I burned hard for the first 5 minutes.
By this point my heart rate was at a ridiculous 188bpm, but holding steady.
However I was highly skeptical I could keep this up for a further 15 minutes, all things considered.
By 8.5 minutes in I’d had to knock the gear down one just to ease off and catch my breath. Not a good sign, but the average was sitting pretty at 265w – above my target – so I figured I could catch a breath.
The problem from here was that I couldn’t get the cadence back up. I went back to my original gearing but struggled to hit 92 from then on. At best I got to 91, but it was creeping down.
Memories came back to me, thoughts of previous failures, where I had blown up around the 10 minute marker. Had I shaved off 5 watts, could I have been far more comfortable?
With 7.5 minutes to go I was massively starting to flag.
The only thing increasing was my heart rate. I could feel my cadence drop, but my power wasn’t compensating. The average was ticking down, though mercifully slowly.
By 5 minutes to go I was seeing green / tempo sections, which was concerning. I was really struggling by then.
About the only saving grace was when I saw the one minute to go marker had passed, I did slightly manage a lift in power, but I was utterly drained and it barely lasted before I sagged again.
I crossed the line with a 250w average, leading to a 237w FTP.
That is 1w higher than 12 weeks ago, but given I already thought I was at 237w it felt like quite a waste of 20 minutes hard work.
Still, I was glad to get through it and put up a result if nothing else.
OK, so lessons learned:
- Aim for 105% FTP. That would mean a target of 255w, not 265w… whoops. This feels actually pretty massively useful knowledge, so whilst it’s taken several tests to get here, I do feel like this is a big takeaway this time.
- Set my bike up before the test to be able to hit 255w at 90rpm or 95rpm. One of the two, pick one and stick to it for a while in races before the test.
- Eat properly.
This last one, I think, is probably the biggest thing I need to change.
I didn’t eat poorly, but I’m not eating properly. I don’t eat much protein. I don’t have protein shakes after rides anymore, and haven’t for months now.
I think with these changes I could do better quite quickly.
However I’m not insane, so I will make these changes and try again in 12 weeks 😅
So up by one watt. Nothing to shout about, but I’ll take any improvement, small or large. It’s what the Garmin predicted these last 12 weeks anyway. I should have just believed it. Oh, and did Zwift Academy 2023 have absolutely zero benefit? Whhhaaaaaat?
