Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy

I still need some help. I thought my saddle sore was good enough to go out and get some data. I was wrong, but got the data anyway. I did the CTS 8' hard-as-you-can-go FTP test. Couldn't do 2 X 20 because of the sore, don't think the result would have been different. CTS says that their long experience with this test shows that 90% of those watts is about your FTP. Well warmed up, I tried to hold 180 watts on a flat road, averaged 181. My HR was 5 beats over LTHR and I was panting hard the last 90", so I think that was about it. Maybe I could have gone a couple watts harder, but only maybe. Close to blowing up. 90% of that is 163 watts, which is 3 watts more than I was able to do indoors. That's not enough to make much difference in TP's TSS.

I did notice some weird stuff, though. For instance my AeT or VT1, however one wants to label it, is about 85% of that 163w. That seems a little high. I can cruise for a very long time at those watts, but then just 20 watts more and I'm toast. At the upper end, I can slaughter pretty much any club rider within 15 years of my age in sprints or on sprint hills. By always riding with people younger than myself, there being almost no one my age who can keep up with me, I've been forced to do a lot of anaerobic training, I suppose at the expense of aerobic training. Looking at short rides on my single I've done where I felt strong, TP often shows about 100 TSS per saddle hour, just because my anaerobic watts are so high in comparison with my FTP and I use them a lot for short bursts. Any little rise and bam I'm over 150% of FTP without even noticing it, but I can't keep it up - I run out of air. Before the PM I didn't notice it because there's little effect on HR from doing that for short periods. When I'm in shape, my HR comes up quite slowly, much more slowly than my change in breathing rate..

I suppose this is a training effect from riding with HR and shooting for an hour of Z4 HR on every weekend group ride for many years, when as I now see, a lot of that "Z4" was power Z6. Be that as it may, it worked really well for long distance training, where I can ride in the aerobic zones fast enough to stay with much better riders, not in the short run, but in the long run I can keep up. They'll drop me on the climbs, especially the early climbs, but I'll get them back, "them" meaning riders within 15 years of my age. "They say" that training in the upper zones pulls your performance up all the way down the zone ladder. I don't know if that's true, but it seemed to have worked for me.

OTOH, maybe I could have done better by cutting way back on that anaerobic training and instead staying mostly in zone 1 of the 3 zone system, as was mentioned in another thread regarding Ironman training. I don't know. I suppose it would take a lot more volume to get up to the same CTL. I never do 6 hour moderate rides. Doesn't sound like much fun and no one's paying me. I'm addicted to riding fast. Again OTOH, training as I've done has given my aerobic system a lot of depth, just not much height. I don't run out of gas very soon.

Comments?