Morning Guys. Been a long time user of FasCat plans…plain and simply they work.
Question I have for you is, does it make sense when doing a specific gravel plan to do your ftp test on gravel? My logic on this is looking back at the data history on my gravel rides, the NP is always significantly higher than road. My thinking here is in order to get the best bang for training time, if my FTP test is done on gravel, it would better reflect real world gravel power and thus yield better results for that discipline. Thoughts?
Ideally you want your FTP test to be as smooth as possible to get your most accurate threshold power. For the 20 minute test you need to use actual power average.
Sometime when riding is rougher and more inconsistent such a mountain biking it is important to also gage effort by looking at your heart rate. This is good for when power jumps around more whirl your heart rate stays more consistent and indicates the effort a bit better.
For efforts 60 minutes long you can use your normalized power for your FTP. So say you do a long gravel group ride, race or simulation ride and you come out with a higher norm power. At this point you could probably use this as your FTP.
You do want to test on pave because there is such a thing as ‘gravel watts’ as described here:
That’s a truer representation of your physiology and therefore a better number to use for your power based training. THEN like you noticed, recognize the gravel watts during your training.