As your FTP (Functional Threshold Power) should be the max you can hold for roughly an hour, in theory this is most accurately established by doing a maximal on hour effort. However that is pretty hard to do sitting in the laundry on the trainer... Not impossible, but given my propensity for the mind to wander and lack of a huge amount of experience pacing a TT type effort getting a realistic measure via that method seemed unlikely. Other protocols for measuring FTP are shorter steady state effort/s, either one 20 minute effort then subtract 5%, or two 8 minute efforts, averaged and subtract 10%. Now there are lengthy online discussions about which test is 'best' and I only began to scratch the surface of these before I realised that for my purpose it didn't really matter. All I wanted was a figure which would better guide interval sessions and also one to act as a baseline against which to compare future tests. My intention will be to test monthly, at least for the next 3-4 months. The focus after that will be more on building intensity and ability to recover from hard efforts rather than specifically trying to increase steady state FTP.
So to the test itself, I didn't really know what to expect and without the motivation of the Sufferfest videos as a background (my usual spur to doing intervals on the trainer) I wasn't sure how well I'd keep it going. So I stuck the youtube clip on of the Madison from the 2013 Worlds which ran in the background, while the Trainerroad program was in minimal format at the bottom of the screen - I like how this works. Somehow watching other people burying themselves makes it somewhat easier to make yourself do it. I was on my regular road bike, the Al Singular Falcon, with a Powertap hub taking care of measurement duties and old faithful Cyclops Wind trainer which makes a hell of a racket and makes headphones mandatory for me as well as anyone in the vicinity, but does the job.
The Trainerroad test is structured so that you do a few hard efforts during a fairly long warm up so that the juices are really flowing by the time you do your first effort. The first one I started off a little tentatively and built it up a bit over the course of the effort. Was definitely working pretty hard by the end but didn't want to leave myself completely broken as there was another one coming up in 10 minutes time. The average power for that first effort was 324W. Max power was 392 which occurred towards the end and I guess indicates I could have started a bit harder. Heart rate rose steadily throughout, peaking at 177, some way off a max of 193, I suppose again indicating I could have gone harder. Still there was a second one to come so I wanted to still have something left.
The ten minutes between efforts went quickly, rather too quickly and before I knew it the countdown to the second effort began. I wanted to try and push a bit harder on this one. I started out quite enthusiastically, maybe overly so for the first 30s. Then backed off a bit too much, then changed gear (as you can see where cadence drops for 45s or so), then changed back and finally settled in to a good rhythm after a couple of minutes. It felt like a good hard tempo but reasonably manageable. This effort averaged 334W, so a notable increase on the first one, but again I was able to lift it in the last minute, so could possibly have gone a bit harder overall. Max heart rate within the effort got to 180, still some ways off my max - I don't know if you should be hitting max on these tests? I suspect that may be more a ramp test, which is really painful....
Anyhow, final result was an extrapolated FTP of 296W. Whether I could really sustain an average of 296W for an hour I don't know, does it really matter? They say if you can't do that then it's a good indication that you need to work on endurance, which is probably true in my case. For me though this is just a good, repeatable test and gives me a strong basis for doing intervals from, and hopefully will also see some improvement over time.
Of course once we start looking at W/Kg FTP this comes out at a fairly paltry 3.4 at my current weight - when you consider most pros are around 5 and top climbers are 6 and over. However I have a good 7-8kg I hope to lose over the next 6 months or so, and I reckon a 10% increase in FTP is feasible through both consistent training and a better crack at the test itself, which would put it over 4 W/Kg - which is not bad for a 40 year old cycling dilettante... In any case, the proof as they say, will be in the racing pudding - and improving ability to do repeated efforts well above threshold will be way more important than 'just' increasing FTP, and certainly the weight is not so much of a concern for my primary aim of doing better on the track.
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