Here’s the scenario, I spent a lot of my day yesterday planning my route for my FTP test. I found the best hill in my area to do it on, a perfect warm up circuit that left me at the bottom of this hill that had plenty of road to complete the 20 minutes full gas, but I made a wrong turn. 17 minutes into the 20 minute test I ran out of road. What I did next feels stupid but it was a hail mary attempt to salvage the 17 minutes of effort. I hit the brakes, turned around will still putting as much power thru the pedals and held the brakes while I hit it hard down hill. I watched my power, modulated my braking to keep a reasonable cadence and it felt super hard. Was this as dump as I think it was and should I redo my test tomorrow?
Screen shot your file and 20 minute effort. You are still going to just use your best 20 minute average power for your field test. Good chance it is within a percent or two of what you finished at so should be fine. Not dumb if you felt gassed at the end and like you gave it all you had. Also you are looking at 3 minutes. Do you feel like you could have kept the same effort you were doing? Do you feel like you could have gone harder?
Yes, I do feel like I could have gone a bit harder. I lost some mental power when I realized I had made the wrong turn. Also, now that I look at the file, I realize I turned around twice, Guess I was that flustered that I forgot. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and when I screw something up it really throws me off.
The place I do my tests is a straight, 4 mile out, 4 mile back section of flat road where you have to turn around at the halfway point. I usually find that I lose a few watts off my average when I do the turn, but then I make up for it because I throw the hammer down for 30 seconds or so, like you did. So bottom line it probably didn’t make much of a diffeence.
It does look like your power was a bit higher in the second half so you had some juice in the tank. But at the same time even with the downhill you were able to bring the power up. So I would just use this as your FTP number for now. If you go through the plan and find that the zones feel off you can retest. But there will be more test down the road.
I would recommend picking a better spot for the test that is less confusing. Straight out or out and back would be best. That climb looks good but even if you could do like a 10 minute lead up to it and finishing on it so you don’t have downhills or turn around. Gives you something to figure out before your next FTP test.
I actually rode the intended road after I did my ftp test and it’s definitely gonna work for my next one and now I know where to go now! After my sweet spot ride today I didn’t feel very challenged, should I have felt pretty worked after today’s 3x8’s? I was supposed to ride at 187w for my intervals but I felt like I could have easily done 200w for 8 minutes. If I were to retest sooner than later when should I do it? As someone who is a little bit of a perfectionist and likes to suffer I feel like I might be cheating myself here. But at the same time I have a hard time not emptying the tank all the time.
With 8 minute sweet spot efforts it is hard to tell. Those are just a short effort. Give it a couple of workouts and see how it goes. Remember to use your heart rate and perceived exertion as well. Sweet spot should feel like a 7 out of 10. But also remember with only 8 minutes in duration it takes time for the effort to come up. It should feel comfortable fast.
