You're doing it wrong. You're starting too hard (probably because you have an overly optimistic idea of what you can do indoors), gradually fading, then rallying and picking it up again as the finish line gets closer.


Right. You appear to be one of the majority of people who cannot produce the same power on an indoor trainer as they can outdoors. There are a variety of reasons for this, which have been discussed at length in this forum as well as others.

You may want to consider testing outside, and controlling variables as much as possible by always using the same section of road. Some coaches advocate testing indoors due to the ability to control variables, but it's not always optimal, and it's rarely a good test for the purpose of determining what you can do outside.

Thank you for the tip's! I will attack it a little different in the future and test in other ways!

I've to date only done 3 FTP tests!

Also, plenty of people put out wattage in competition that is well above any testing they did in training. Competition does an amazing job of distracting you from the pain. Whether you should train by race numbers is a different debate, but I tend to avoid it as I don't want to feel like I'm over training during my regular weekly workouts.

I was racing off of "feel" and I "felt" like I needed to catch my buddy up the road from me and he "felt" that I shouldn't catch him (I did). He smoked me in the run (Shrug), but I netted roughly 21% more performance than I thought I could do!

How much do you weigh? 320 watts for 54 minutes is very good and seeing as you were obviously under threshold would indicate you are capable of sustaining even more watts for a 40k TT.
Or your power meter was fucked.

I am on the Chunky Side (5'10 @ 170lbs), I did not have a meter on the bike (just got one this past winter, I was using my wahoo indoor before) so my calculations are based on my time/speed etc for day of event. You can see here (I know it could be off slightly)

You had an 8mph headwind for the whole TT?

That's embarrassing - I thought it was asking what the wind speed for the day. I guess that makes it a little more difficult to calculate (I remember headwind but it was a 2 loop out and back).

Actually, that makes it easy, when it's looped or out and back, in the absence of actual power data, you assume wind is a wash (0mph).

-Eric

Do I understand correctly that you calculated holding 320W for the outdoor ride?
Have you done any outdoor tests with a power meter?

Yes, that is correct. I just purchased some vector 3’s for my bike this winter and have yet to date ride outdoor with them (or put them on my bike for that fact). I totally messed up the calculator I found online, as said before embarrassing.

When I re-calculated it without the headwind it.... well wasn’t even my FTP...

At least I’m learning!

One last question: In the screen shot of your indoor effort to assess FTP is power from the Vector 3's or is it "virtual"?
I ask because you can use the V3's inside for a better estimate, if you are not already doing so.

It was on a kickr with trainer road

I think that if wearing even a slightly charitable hat, that could be interpreted as "examining" or "comparing", in other words what is the relationship. And I think it tells us that for the untrained, FTP (40km TT) is below MLSS, but for elites it is above. So not equal, and not even a direct relationship (scalar). Compare that to other physiological markers which are correlated though again not equal (FTP vs LT, MAP vs 16k).
As I see it, optimised training is exercising at the intensity and duration relative to one's current capabilities that elicits the desired adaptations. So the holy grail is identifying the appropriate markers to define current capabilities. The optimal training may still require a further empirical process for each individual (e.g fine tuning what percentage of FTP for 20min intervals), but it surely helps if those levels remain constant to the chosen reference regardless of changes in current capabilities (and if the training works, there will be changes to factor in). So from all that, it would appear that setting levels based on 40km TT and MLSS would have divergent tracking with improvement, or to put it cynically one must be more wrong than the other. My rational mind, admittedly hampered by lack of specific knowledge in this field, would argue that LT, MLSS etc would be the appropriate reference markers, but maybe there are other factors involved as an individual becomes more trained.
I'll pause there and simply say: discuss.