HendrikMDik wrote:
Cool - was thinking that there is still heaps of time for recovery...
Am less worried now by the recovery aspect (my training has involved regular hard intervals and sufficient time in the saddle), now I am more curious about race-pace applicability of an FTP test result that I get in the next couple of days...
I have been using trainer road for the last few months with a Wahoo Kickr (not properly calibrated for the last few months). I found that my vector pedals and wahoo have been off from each other (I haven't ridden outdoors much in the last few months and my last 90km ride was at a good comfortable pace - felt good throughout and worked more from perceived effort than from the meter as it seemed very off - the average power was very low, and there were a lot of dropouts in my power when I was maintaining a very consistent pressure on the pedals) - my power recorded from my vectors measured significantly less than what the wahoo read - so I reinstalled them and recalibrated them both. That seemed to fix it and when I tested both side by side they now read the same.
Unfortunately, possibly due to some drift in the calibration of the wahoo, 200 watts on the wahoo felt a bit more difficult during this 5min comparison than it has for the last few weeks... hard to say whether its just my feeling on the day or not, but if there has been drift in the calibration then it means my hours of effort on the trainer have been less intense than they needed to ideally be. If I've been training so that my day to day training is based on an FTP that is only of 90% of what my true FTP is and I test now and come back with an FTP that is now much higher than I have been working from in my day to day training, then what effect will this have on my race day?
If I was (hypothetically) going to ride the Wahoo using the power set up that I have been training for for the last few months, then I could just use the power settings that I've been using for the last few months, I'd perform pretty much in line with what I have been training for for the last few months - probably less than if I had been really working at settings that better reflected my FTP.
I'm worried that if I calibrate now, get a much higher FTP, and then work from that, that I could blow up on the ride... Thoughts?
Current plan is to do an outdoor FTP test in the next day or so before the Busselton 70.3.
What I'm worried about is that because my outdoor FTP is an unknown, and since my race plan is to work off 75-80% FTP - then I will need more certainty about what my race day application should be.
Of course that should be based on the FTP that I have from the power meter that I am going to use in the race, but since my training is likely to have been as a percentage of a lower FTP, then when my FTP tests higher (as it should after a couple months without an accurate test) then should I work at a lower %? Or go with what my test suggests I am capable of? This assuming that I am well rested and that the rest of my taper goes well.
Yes you will blow up if you go and race at a higher FTP than you have been training at. You have been training with a lower FTP and think you need to stick to that.
I see it almost like running a 5k and looking at the marathon you can run based off that. Just because you can run X 5k doesn't automatically mean you will run Y marathon. You need to put the work in the run that marathon time. So looking at it in this case, while you may have an FTP 20, 30, 50 watts higher it doesn't mean much as you have been using that as your training guide. I think your SOL.