greenlight149

how much suffering do you perceive when you are riding at or very close to FTP? how much is that suffering compared to how much more you can suffer?

i always thought that if you are suffering so much then you are probably going into the red, which will ultimately make you stop, but when riding at sustainable efforts ( eg. FTP), the amount of suffering that i personally experience doesn't seem to match what i read or see other peoples level of suffering.

am i just not pushing hard enough? i read that you should be super exhausted, nearly falling off your bike by the end of a FTP test, but i find if i push any harder i wouldnt be able to sustain the length of a FTP test, and if i back it off a bit then i dont feel like dying at the end ....

how much are you suffering?

WhyFi

You're not going hard enough.

caloso

You should be super exhausted, nearly falling off your bike by the end of a FTP test.

greenlight149

i ride on rollers so i think its preventing me from pushing beyond a certain point, or else i will literally fall off. i dont have a turbo yet. anyone else have similar feelings on rollers?

Bah Humbug

Just getting through the cooldown after an FTP test is a challenge (or should be). Ride harder.

kbarch

The whole FTP thing is a mystery to me, but I find that suffering is a result, something I notice later, after I've stopped doing whatever strenuous, poisonous, or other if-it-doesn't-kill-us-makes-us-stronger thing, so my answer would have to be "none." As soon as the stress becomes an issue, the gig is up. The challenge is to prevent stress from becoming a conscious issue, to deny it, and to turn it off so you can keep going without the distraction. Pain and suffering is an opinion, and much of the time a pretty stupid one. We can entertain it at our leisure.

greenlight149

copy that, just did a new FTP test, up by 16 watts! definitely felt it more this time around.

Dunbar

20 minutes at FTP should be hard but doable depending on how good you feel that day. During an FTP test you technically will be riding above FTP. If you're well motivated it doesn't necessarily feel any harder than regular intervals. After setting my 20 minute PR for power I had to get off my bike and sit down to prevent falling over.

lsberrios1 

Are you training with hr or power? If it's hr, i may be wrong, your hr should drift with time if you are keeping the same power so if you are keeping the same hr chances are your legs are putting out less power. However, if you are training with power then it means you arent going hard enough. When i do mine i am about to pass out. From my last tt i estimate my ftp should be 270-275 given that at 53 minutes in at 269 i was able to sprint to the finish line.

canam73

How much am I suffering? For the first 5 minutes not much at all. For the last 5 it's an all out fight.

mvnsnd

Maybe I'm wrong here, but riding at FTP is slightly different from an FTP test. The standard 20 min FTP test takes your average power over that 20 min and multiplies it by .95. That implys that the 20 min test is (should be) at a level 1.05 times your FTP. This is what dunbar is saying
Riding at FTP should be hard, but not causing one to pass out. The FTP test should be very hard, with little to no energy left.

carpediemracing 

By definition if you hold a given power level for one hour and one second then you weren't at FTP. You should be absolutely wasted at one hour flat. Since that kind of pacing is hard to maintain except when, I dunno, being chased by zombies or a hungry but slow wolf, people do the 20 minute effort. The worst part of the FTP test is pushing yourself hard enough to make the test somewhat accurate. There are shorter efforts as well.

Typically a 40km time trial is used as a "full FTP test". It'll take normal fit racers an hour to do that distance, 50 minutes for the fast ones, and maybe 1:10 minutes for the slower ones (I'm closer to 1:10 than 50 min). Average power in that kind of effort is usually pretty close to actual FTP.

Wesley36

At least on the Wattage forum, Coggan's notion of FTP is considerably more fuzzy than that. If I have some time later today I can try to dig up some of his comments, but he generally takes a 40km TT as his reference (which should be ~ 1 hour for most people).

greenlight149

Let me clarify, im using trainer road to see how much I'm improving in terms of power, not necessarily absolute power. And yea the 20 min test was done at above my actual ftp. I don't think I'll be able to go as hard on the rollers as a turbo to the point of almost passing out, or have nothing left in the tank, for the risk of falling over.

topflightpro

It also can take some practice to get good at actually doing FTP tests. If you're not used to trying to go hard and steady for 20 minutes, going out and doing the test can be a challenge in an of itself, and it sounds like you are struggling a bit to find the proper balance of effort over the duration of the test.

caloso

+1