My Second FTP Test

As covered in last week’s weekly review, and mentioned several times over the last month or two, I really wanted to get an FTP test done and dusted before the end of 2019.

My goal was to finish the year at, or ideally above 200w as an FTP.

Given that I had a rest on Sunday, and then my usual Monday night rest yesterday, and that I worked from home today, I figured this would be amongst my best days to give the FTP Test a proper shot.

Mentally I was fairly well prepared for this. I’d done an on-road FTP guesstimate during the Corem de Roselend climb, so had a fair idea of what I could do in 20 minutes, and therefore had a figure in mind to aim for during this ride.

For the warm up I did 20 minutes / 10 kilometers on Tick Tock, mainly sticking to about 110-120w, just getting the legs spinning. And truthfully, somewhat dreading the warm up coming to an end.

I put in only a very small amount of harder effort – if anything just to give myself some idea of what lay in store for the forthcoming 20 minutes. Sadism.

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The last (and only other) time I did an FTP test it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

Such was the horror that I have been putting this day off for a good long while now. The only thing pushing me through to do this today was that I’m rapidly running out of days in 2019 to meet my goal of 200+ watts as an FTP.

As mentioned in the weekly review, the idea of today’s ride was that if I completely screwed it up, I would still have enough days left to recover, reset, and retry during the true Christmas break.

But ideally, I would get this over and done with before Father Christmas pays us a visit.

Lesson learned from last time:

The Zwift structured warm up for the FTP test (short) is no good for me.

I skipped every one of the harder blocks, and set myself up for the 6 minutes @ 110w.

This may be an anti-pattern or whatever, but I know my own body. Last time I did this test I was thrashed before I’d started. Those higher intensity blocks are a bad idea, in my experience.

I didn’t do the full 6 minutes… after about 3 I jumped in. Now or never.

Mentally, I tried to chunk this ride up into 4 blocks of 5 minutes.

I fully expected the first 5 minutes to be fairly easy. And then every subsequent 5 minutes, the intensity would ratchet up a notch… or several.

My target was 220w. Having done a bit of maths (read: Google’d it), I knew a 220w average would put me at or around 209w as an FTP. I’d be more than happy with this.

Out of the gate, however, I was struggling to keep to 220w. I was spiking up to 240w for the first 5 minutes, and having to make a conscious effort to ease off, then back on again, rinse and repeat.

By the end of the first five minutes, I was already feeling it.

Unlike it practically every other training session I have done / do, I started off at a cadence of around 80-85rpm.

For whatever reason, I find this really taxing. I much prefer to spin faster, even if the watts are the same.

Mentally I resolved to keeping this lower cadence until the 10 minute mark, and then I’d allow myself some respite in the form of a gear change (1 notch easier), and give my legs a chance to spin.

I didn’t make it all the way to 10 minutes before I had to change gears.

Almost immediately I felt better, but the wattage dropped off as a result. Fortunately, it didn’t drop too much. Where as before I’d been around 220-230w, now I was in the 210-225w range. However, I did feel better for it.

Again, I resolved to spin at this cadence (around 95rpm) for the next five minutes.

Now, in truth, around the 10 minute mark I started to want to quit.

There were just a very few things keeping me going:

• Not wanting to do this 10 minutes again the next time;
• Not wanting to write how I’d tried, and failed, on here;
• Knowing I have done this before, and so I can do this again.

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Unfortunately I didn’t get the 5 minute screenshot. By this point I was sore all over. Taking screenshots was not a huge priority for me.

I mentioned in the weekly review how I’ve had muscle pain in my chest – possibly as a result of trying to ride in a more TT-like position infrequently. Well, usually this is no problem on the bike. But not today.

Today it hurt. Like hell.

Again my plan to keep to 5 minute blocks faltered somewhat. Around the 10, and 15 minute marks I’d dropped from the “easier” gearing to the more grindy, and tried to do a minute or two in harder gears.

Typically what I find when I do this is that it certainly feels like I’m suddenly pushing much harder, but when I look at the wattage figure on screen, I’m barely doing much more. So hard to take when you’re giving it everything you have.

Probably the hardest segment of the four five minute blocks was the third segment: minutes 10 through 15.

When it got down to the final five minutes, the end was in sight so it was slightly easier to find something to focus on, besides my struggle for air and thumping heart.

I was all to conscious of the average wattage figure slowly ticking ever downwards. Again, dropping gears and putting in as much as I had left was all done to try to push the current wattage into a spike in the hope that it might briefly slow the overall average decline.

I did manage to capture the most amusing – in hindsight – part of the ride.

As you can see, Jake Sanderson put in a comment “Great work Chris” just as I looked up to see the timer tick under one minute remaining.

Inspired, I managed to drop to the hardest gear I could muster and really power through that final minute. Emptying the tanks, as they say.

Yeah… but anyway, he wasn’t talking to me. There was another big ride on and the ride leader was called Chris. Fun times.

Still, it did the trick for me, so thanks Jake 😉

OK, so at the end of 20 minutes of hell, I managed to bump up from 195w to 206w.

Pretty much bang in the middle of the high and low range that I expected after Cormet de Roselend. Brilliant stuff.

Obviously, I am really pleased with breaking through 200w. It’s been the goal pretty much all year, and is a huge milestone to reach for me, and a massive reward for the dedication and commitment I’ve put in to get here.

When I think back to my early rides … wow. It’s incredible progress, and I’m so grateful that I decided to document it all on this blog. It would be super easy to forget just how much my personal fitness and overall health has improved over the last 9 months.

A really important metric from this ride was my overall, and average heart rates.

This test: max 192bpm, and average 184bpm.

Last test: max 199bpm, and average 189bpm.

That’s the metrics just for the 20 minute test.

The drop in both max and average is massive for me, again, another big sign that my fitness and health is moving in the right direction.

Whilst I didn’t cover a huge distance tonight – 26km or so, all in – I definitely feel absolutely thrashed.

My legs haven’t felt like jelly after a Zwift’ing in a long while. It’s again interesting to think back to how my legs used to feel like this very frequently after a morning’s ride.

Is this a sign I’m not pushing myself hard enough at the moment, or that my legs have become stronger? I’m honestly not 100% sure. I’m hoping for the latter, of course.

Given the intensity of this ride, it’s kinda weird to come out with a TSS of only 45.

That said, Training Peaks has this down as a 50TSS, and at 29:06, comparatively the closest other ride would by Emily’s Short Mix, which Training Peaks put me down at 45TSS over 30 minutes the last time I did that.

I honestly don’t think I could have done any better tonight. I truly gave it my all. I’m absolutely delighted with having met my primary yearly cycling goal with a couple of weeks to spare, and am now thoroughly looking forward to my Christmas break consisting of rides I want to do, rather than having the fear of an FTP test looming over me.

Honestly, I think the change in routine about a month or so ago, swapping to SST and weekly hard climbs has done wonders for me. Of course it never feels that way during the ride, but the gains have been made clear to me today.

Tomorrow’s ride will be complete recovery. A nice hour or so at a very easy spin. I’m wondering now how the usual workouts I do will be impacted by this new figure.

Likely not very much.

However, now that I’ve made broken through 200w, the next goal needs to be set.

And so it continues.

Ride On!