To begin with, 20' all out effort is not a FTP test.

There is a very good book by David Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" :) He describes how we tend to simplify complex issues with "easy questions" and how it does not deliver.

How do I crush my IM race? How to improve my ability to crush IM race? What leads to top performacne? - These questions are hard.
How do I improve my bike leg? - It is slightly easier.
How do I improve my FTP? - Even more easy :)
How do I improve my FTP Test result? - Now it's extremely easy...

... but it does not improve the IM performance we began with. Its just easy - to measure, to work on, etc.

Going for 8' or 20' all out benchmark will not transfer to 10h effort. You won't see 50 or 100-mile ultrarunners setting the pace based on Cooper Test. That would be crazy, right? But we have more uneducated nerds in triathlon I guess ;)

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You mean 5-hour CP? I don't think there can be such a thing as a 5-hour FTP as even the most fit people can't hold threshold for that long.

We're taking training back to the pre-FTP days?

I didn't know it was such dark days for what was once considered a keystone of modern cycling training.

*Functional* threshold

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

OK, I'm not a trained physiologist, but I think I've got some basics down.

The "functional" part just means it's measured by performance in the actual sport you're competing in. E.g. "functional" for a cyclist is to measure FTP while cycling.

The key word is threshold. That derives from "lactate threshold." Or the intensity level where lactate starts to accumulate faster than it can be removed. An intensity level that generally can't be held for much longer than an hour. If you're just measuring your max power for an arbitrary duration, the term "Critical Power" is typically used. E.g. CP120 is the max power you can hold for two hours. CP60 and FTP are effectively the same thing.

Overview from the man himself is here.

The thing that surprises me about Desert Dude and others here is saying that you need to test CP300 (or something of that duration) in order to get a useful prediction of IM leg power.

That's sort of spits in the face of the notion that FTP is a powerful predictor of all long-duration performance, e.g. in Coggan's words, "LT when expressed as power output...is the single most important physiological determinant of performance in events ranging from as short as a 3 km pursuit to as long as a 3 week stage race."

That's not to say that it'd be silly to attempt an IM bike leg without having done training at near-race distance. Of course that would be silly, and performance over those workouts should be an important determinant of race-day power. But I wouldn't call FTP useless in that regard either.

A Powerfull predicator yes. But its still about as much or as little usefull as f ex a pace chart. If you run a 5k in 20:00 all out, mcmillan calc and the likes puts you at 3:15 for the Marathon. That can be about right, or very wrong, depending on what the athlete is trained for. If his longest run was 10k, no way a 20:00 5k runner does 3:15 mara.

The FTP-function Likewise. It gives you a good estimate of your ability if properly trained for The duration! Not The other way around.

Thats why you pace a matathon off what you can do in a fast finish long run. Not based of your 5k time.

I'm as certain as I can be that is not what I am saying

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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Maybe I misunderstood what that meant. I guess it depends on the intensity of those rides. I fully agree that a near race-day intensity ride at 4-6H is the superior way to predict race-day performance. And any good IM training plan should at least have *one* of those, if just for mental preparation.

But that doesn't make FTP useless, in my opinion.

But if you meant taking data from 4-6H "tempo" or low-intensity rides. Then I don't think that's all that valuable for race-day prediction.

I don't see where that statement has been made by DD or anyone else.

For 90+% of people doing an ironman a near race day intensity ride is nothing more than a ride in zone 2. For 90+% of people racing an IM the IM bike ride is no more intense than a zone 2 ride.

If you do 4-6-8 of those you will be pretty dialed in as to what you will be able to ride come race day.

Even if you do some intervals in those rides, the overall flavor of that ride is going to be level 2/zone 2.

It comes down to what are the specific demands of the race and how to go about getting those.

You can do the work to raise your FTP by 20-25w and see a 2w increase for the power you can hold over 112 miles. Who doesn't want to have the ability to ride 2w more power for an IM. Yet, I ask, was that a good use of your training time?

Or

You can raise your FTP by 5w and see a 10-30w increase in the power you can hold for 4-5-6h.

Now the question becomes which is a better for your IM performance, a 2w or 10-15w increase in your power over 112 miles?

FTP is great, I use it all the time for things when coaching/writing schedules/doing analysis/planning etc. It's the anchor point for many things. Everything is built around that. Yet I also care much, much more about how much power you can produce over the IM bike leg for parts of the season.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I just pulled some data from a pandemic training cycling training camp that 2 of my athletes did. I thought two real life examples might be of interest to everyone

Athlete 1 pre camp mFTP 243 Best mean maximal power (MMP) in the 90d before camp for 240minutes (4 hours) was 171
Athlete 2 pre camp mFTP 268 Best MMP in the 90d before camp for 4h was 186

Post camp
Athlete 1 mFTP 266 MMP 4h 199
Athlete 2 mFTP 289 MMP 4h 208 (also had >1200 ft of descending in this ride and <8:30 at 0-5w They were ABP = Always be pedaling)


Athlete 1 mFTP increased 23w 4h MMP increase was 28w
Athlete 1 did 3 sub threshold interval sessions and zero threshold specific work. They rode 27 times in 30days

Athlete 2 mFTP increased 21w 4h MMP increase was 22w
Athlete 2 did no specific interval work during this block. Just lots of climbing ranging from 45 minutes to 120 minutes in 2-3 rides per week accumulate at once or over the duration of the rides in 10-30 min blocks. They rode 25 times in 23d.

I used mFTP bc I had to peg their blocks to something. Also didn't didn't really have a chance to pre test bc these were furlough training camps and spur of the moment. Both rode minimal 331 miles per week maxed at 379.

Now why did I post this you may be asking yourself. Valid question. I even asked it of myself.

Instead of just dumping tons of volume on them, had I wanted to do a block strictly focused on FTP development/growth I could have dumped tons of focused intervals on them. Would I have gotten the same increase in mFTP? Probably not.

Most likely their mFTP would have increased even more. How much more? IDK, a fair bit more though \_O_/

What I wouldn't have gotten is their increases in MMP at 4 hours. Sure their mFTP went up. Yet their ability to ride at higher watts went up ~ = or > their mFTP. That's what you want if you're doing an IM. It's really not about FTP even though FTP plays a part.

FTP is a great starting point. Drive it up as high as you can. No matter what distance you're racing you'll see improvement. A more tailored approach though can yield greater gains for the specifics of what you're racing.

Hopefully you guys found the #s to be of interest.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

The best predictor of performance is performance. It absolutely spits in the face. I spit in the general direction of the face!

Also, Dr. Coggan was right before he was wrong before he was right. Functional is the operative word. He's also mixing terms... LT vs. FT. Functional and Threshold in FTP are totally meaningless, or rather, can mean whatever you want. For IM, it's the number you can hold for the bike leg and still rip off a fast run.

Fitness is resistance to fatigue, fatigue is metabolic, metabolic is the body's response to the specific stimulus or "function" you are asking your body to do, and what you're asking your body to do requires a certain number of KJs. It's all in there. Your time will be what your time will be. It's already been decided. Whether you bike the time that CP300 predicts you should or whether you bike the time that CP20 says you should is your decision, or rather, is the only reason why I went to Kona five times instead of some other poor guy.

Like I always say, the IM bike leg should be your easiest 5hr ride of your season. This is why we train, and this is why we optimize our fits. Desert Dude knows this as well. Everyone else that says 75% of 95% of 20min power is crazy.

E

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

You just described a threshold

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I thought it's what he meant by this:



That sounded to me, like a CP240-CP360 test.

Which is incredibly valuable if those rides were near race intensity. No better test than the performance itself.

I don't want this to be a pissing match. I was just surprised over the general disdain being cast at the 20-minute FTP estimation as one of the reasonable set of tools used to predict race performance.

It used to be possibly the gold standard, with some preference for 60 min/40K to make it a little more accurate.

I disagree that 20’ bike test results were ever the gold standard for predicting IM race performance.

Well not just IM...I mean using it as a broad descriptor of cycling power for periods longer than ~5 minutes. There's nothing all that special about IM. I thought FTP was part of the revolution of using power meters, etc.

The problem with a 20 min test is for those with high anaerobic capacity it'll over predict FTP and now all their training levels are off. A 20min test is accurate for ~60-65% of the people. Most people aren't aware of which camp they fall in.

Part of why I often think so many people like doing sweet spot work. It's closer to most people's actual threshold. There's really nothing hard about 4x(16~ 98% FTP on 4 min ez) other than it's a long set.

I theorize that a lot people couldn't do that. If they set their FTP using a 20 min test over it over predicted their FTP. They might make the first one, probably/maybe the 2nd one, then fail sooner and sooner if they continue on.

partly I blame a lot of the online training platforms that use a ton of short intervals to train people then use short tests such as 2x8. Everything is geared towards producing the highest 20 min power # possible. Which is probably advantageous if you're bike racing in the Cat 4/5 but not so great if you're doing 70.3 or IM's.

anyway imo this has been a great discussion. Thanks to the OP for asking and for you chiming in. I suspect people have learned a lot.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Right, there’s a big gap between 5 minutes and ~5 hours. Therein lies the distinction. See DD’s comments for more detail.

I would think a CP240 test would leave me falling down when I get off the bike, completely spent and unable to run. Don't know about you, but that's not how I do my long rides. I believe that DD and others are suggesting that reviewing those long ride training sessions for RPE/run quality post ride and that this will tell you more about your ability to race an IM than your CP20/FTP. As DD says a couple of posts back, FTP isn't useless. It's a good baselining metric and that generally what's good for IM pace will raise your FTP as well. Just that focusing on raising a CP20 based estimate for FTP (likely done through a lot of threshold and VO2 work) and hoping for a great IM will likely lead to a disappointing overall IM.

Power meters gave cyclists the same possibility to measure effort as f ex runners. And alot of knowledgeble people then did alot of good research into training, based on that tool (powermeter), which resultated in training recommendations not very different from other endurace sports. To increase threshold - ride around threshold;)

20 minute power is just one benchmark when assessing cycling fitness. I think it is a useful metric to predict what your lactate threshold/1 hour power/4mmol per liter blood lactate/zone 4 is, without going the full hour. However, athletes with high Vo2max, poor economy and low weekly mileage will overestimate their true lactate threshold by quite a bit. Furthermore, for an IM you don't want to be producing much lactate on the bike leg, so a much more important threshold is the aerobic threshold, or point when you first start producing a measurable amount of blood lactate beyond resting levels. This is referred to by most triathlon coaches as Zone 2. You see, when you go for a truly easy run or ride and measure the amount of lactate in your blood at the end, it will be around the same as when you started. This is the real predictor for IM performance, and can be obtained by continually measuring your training efforts with heart rate and power, and learning what your zones are over time based on your performances. So, if you know what the top of your zone 2 heart rate is for the bike, go out and ride for 2-3 hours at this heart rate and see what your power is. This is what you should try to hold for your Im bike leg...

Elite IM athletes can run close to 6 minute miles and ride at around 280-300 watts without any rise in blood lactate. Their lactate threshold is of course going to be faster than this. However, I would argue that a 400 watt threshold athlete with a 300 watt zone 2 cap has a much greater risk of blowing up during an IM than a 360 watt threshold athlete with a 290 zone 2 cap, because the first athletes superior ability to produce and process lactate puts them at greater risk for riding too hard. We of course see this every year at Kona...