Ftp set too low. Either way you wouldn’t get over 100 TSS per hour for 4 hours even with surges.

Retest or add ftp until you don’t get 100TSS per hour for long rides.

465 for 4 hours says it all.

Nope, sorry. My FTP just isn't that high. Here's the Strava for this ride:

Years ago, I did a similar ride (fewer but harder/longer climbs) and got an IF of .99 for a 3hr25min ride. This was around the same time I did the NJ State 40km TT, so I knew
what was my FTP at the time. IIRC, my FTP was ~272 (as determined by the flat TT which was, of course, all out), my average power for the ride was 224, and the NP was like 269.

Rides like these break the NP algorithm.

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Hmm.

Max power is 1453? Is that a legit number for you? Looks like all kinds of power meter dropouts during the ride as well. Ride time was 3:55, and pedaling time was 2:59? I'm seeing avg power is 159.

That max power was from a standing start in a bit too big of a gear (coming down from a descent to a highway red light, and then starting up towards a climb). Instantaneous power could have been that high (for less than a second, of course.. Riding time was 3:55, and elapsed time was 4:14 (stopped for a bite to eat at three hours). The "power meter dropouts" are when descending (they match with zero cadence and higher speed, and align with the ). Bolt says 160 avg power, Strava says 159. Bolt shows 3sec max power as 763 and 5sec at 627, so a very brief burst of 1453 is possible at that moment. Not a meaningful number, I'd say.

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My FTP is 273, I'm 44, and I would not be able to make my power meter read above 1100 for even an instant, even if I was rested and gave it an all-out effort. A more reasonable number for a standing start where you push hard in a big gear is 350 - 400 watts. And that would have to be a pretty hard effort really. I suspect there's something screwey about your power meter in that situation. The resolution of power data displayed on Strava is terrible so it's hard to say, but it looks like your constantly spiking over at least 300 -400 watts, and then going to zero, so you are putting it in that situation often.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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I agree that that number is not reasonable; I also don't see any similar spikes on the ride. I was tested at max ~1200 a number of years ago at a cycling camp (on a Computrainer, IIRC).

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Out of curiosity, was this ride on a TT bike in the aero bars or road bike? I hear you on the age thing, though. Turned 66 two weeks ago. I don’t have a power meter anymore but Zwift has me at FTP 204 on a Kickr. Don’t get above 480 on surges in the big gear. I was at FTP 240 a couple of years ago but had knee surgery and after rehab and training, I don’t think I’ll ever get those watts back.

Road bike. The steepest climb (Hooper) I did had me over 600W for a bit.

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I know Ken... he’s right his FTP just isn’t very good. Fortunately, he’s really nice and not the ugliest man on the planet so he gets by....

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Randy Christofferson(http://www.rcmioga.blogspot.com

Insert Doubt. Erase Hope. Crush Dreams.

I'm pretty sure I've just been insulted (at least once), but I'm also not very bright so I can't be certain.

(Randy: a torn meniscus in my right knee has curtailed my running and likely ended my triathlon career, such as it was. Yes, I'm doing this riding on a torn meniscus)

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"Go yell at an M&M"

What power meter is this? Is there a way to examine the entire data file?

PowerTap G3 hub, via Wahoo Elemnt Bolt to Wahoo App to Strava. If there's a data file in there, let me know how to access it and I'll send it to you.

I have another ride from 4/21 this year, which was a hard-as-I-can hilly TT ride. Avg power 190, NP 225, TSS 132, total time 1:01:44.

Andy C. had asked for the data file for the NP-busting ride I did in 2002 (IIRC), and I sent it to him. He didn't believe that my FTP (verified in a 40km TT soon thereafter) was as specified, nor that I could do something like a dozen short hard climbs at like Z4. (here's the route for that ride. Somewhere, I have the csv file for that, back when PowerTap actually gave you such a file. I'll fire up the old MacBook and see if it is there).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I don't use Strava so I don't know how to download data from it. Also, I don't use a bolt, so although I suspect there's a way to get data from the wahoo app, I don't know the details about that either.

RChung wrote:

I don't use Strava so I don't know how to download data from it. Also, I don't use a bolt, so although I suspect there's a way to get data from the wahoo app, I don't know the details about that either.

I found the file from 2003. Unfortunately, it is 351KB, and the max size allowed here is 250KB. Let me know if this works for you:

https://drive.google.com/...TBG/view?usp=sharing

This is the .fit file for yesterday's ride.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I'll open with ' believe you'. And then follow up with but, you're not getting the full story.

First off there are many many threads on here that talk about how to test and get an FTP and whilst each approach has validity, each will give a different measure. If you use Training Peaks then you even get a graph that shows how your power duration curve compares to other athletes - sprinters have a steep drop in their power as time increases, endurance athletes more flat. For me my peak power is a lot lower now than it used to be (Now I see 1200w as a 5speak @90kg compared to the 1500w+ 5s recorded 10 years a go when 10kg heavier). But I now run well off 265w for my HIM average on a flat course for 2h:10m where before I'd struggle to hold that as an all out. Ironman is 235w for 5:15. My point being that if we accept that there's differences in the time power profile, we can also see that defining an FTP off a 20 minute test is flawed. Not fatally flawed, but definitely flawed.

I know from some of the training rides I did on the TT bike with multiple 20 minute efforts at 310w we (my coach and I) had a really good handle on my capacity as relevant to what we were aiming for, and TP/Garmin/Zwift all estimated my FTP at about the same number. However I also went out to do some solo hill work one day, and remember the NP being 309w after 3.25 hours, and I'd still got another hour and a half to go. I think including the cool down and ride home I ended up just under 300NP for 5 hours. So whilst that wasn't quite meeting your terminology of NP busting I could have trimmed that workout to be such.

I know I recover quickly when I keep the sustained (over 5 mins) effort under 400w, so I target that, and then when we get to any false flats or over the top of the hill I am way way better at keeping the power on where the majority then ease right off to recover. If I get over 420w on a climb I'm going to be same as the majority and then need some time to recover. So depending on the (bike) race/ ride my approach will vary. I definitely can't sprint like I used to. But by a combination of fairly high tempo steady state climbs and then short attacks on the steep bits I'm 'not bad in the hills' amongst my peers. There are people that are faster on the steady state, and others faster on the steep bits, but up almost all the 'real' climbs around here I do ok. Again, the relevance of this is that the NP calculation is based around the effective average from varied power, and that's something that it seems to me is something that will vary person to person and with training.

Face it, some people are great TT riders as they can hold a very high steady state power, others train to be sprinters or hill climbers, and their training is about intervals and recovery. If you were to say you'd spent 5 years living in Holland and doing 60 minute TT's then gone to the alps and out of the blue got this NP ride with no adaptation, I'd be dubious. But go the other way, spend a lot of time riding hills and with a group to adapt to that interval based riding more than steady state and seems fine to me (the max power doesn't, but a single point reading I'd ignore).

Thanks. OK, a couple of little things: that max power is articfactual there are 4 records of exactly 1 second length each that are > 800 watts -- they occur for only a second, and the power immediately before each was 0, and the speed in the second after each high power second did not appreciably change.

All that said, those 4 records are *not* the cause for the unusually high NP.

I can't replicate the Bolt's estimate of NP for the entire ride, but I still get a pretty high value: 203 NP rather than the Bolt's 212. That's for just over 4 hours.

More pointedly, what was happening in your ride from about 2h20m to about 2h40m? They definitely look like intervals to me. How hard were those 20 minutes in a subjective sense?

2:20 was the start of a long, fast downhill, followed by a relatively flat to slightly uphill section, followed by a downhill to a stop at a highway (where that 1400W spike occurred on starting across) around 2:28. 2:28 to 2:31 was an uphill, followed by the steepest hill on the entire ride ("Hooper") from 2:31 to 2:35. 2:35 to 2:36 was a downhill, followed by another very steep uphill from 2:36 to 2:39 ("Belvidere"). So, easy, relatively easy, easy, very/very/very hard, easy, very/very hard. From 2:31 to 2:35 was a climb (Hooper and a bit thereafter that also climbed) punctuated by very brief flat/downhill bits, hence the zero power you see as "between intervals". After 2:40 is a flat bit with a great view of the NYC skyline (also with zero power for 10-20 seconds). The graphs I see in Strava match the terrain perfectly, and would look like "intervals", for sure.

The Hooper Strava segment was 1:13 at 385W; I debated whether to attempt it, as I know it is very steep (12% average, max 22% according to Strava) although only ~300yds long. Belvidere was 2:07 at 294W. I was almost toast on Belvidere after nearly three hours of climbing. The subsequent climb a few minutes later (2:50 @ 252W) was taken at about the minimum effort needed to get up it (irrelevant comment: the top of that climb is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard (Twin Lights)).

Curious where are those four artifacts you mention, so I can see what was happening at that point.

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The ride time without pauses was 3:55 (not over four hours), which could explain the discrepancy. Still, 203NP vs 159AP is an issue for a four hour tour, er, ride, right?

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Do you have your power duration curve available somewhere? From the recent ride, GC's implementation of the CP modeling puts you at relatively low CP, and high W' balance.

Unlike Ed earlier, my FTP/CP is around yours but my 1s pmax and 20s pmax are 900w+ and 800w+, and also with a high W' balance. I've intentionally done anaerobic intervals or sprints to inflate my training load for rides, and have rides with disproportionately high IF.

My suspicion is that you're also utilizing anaerobic capacity to supplement during rides, hence the IF "inflation".

Interesting. I always thought the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard was the garbage dump at Fresh Kills.

68m5s, 102m16s, 147m57s, 162m45s

BTW, your file also says you hit 70 mph (=112 km/h).

1:08:05: starting from a red light.
1:42:16: starting from a red light.
2:27:57: starting from a red light.
2:42:45: starting from a red light.

I see a pattern here.

And, of course, that 70mph is in error.

So, is there an issue with NP/TSS with an interval-like ride? And does it matter at all? The .csv file I linked is more egregious (~224 AP, 269 NP (~272 FTP) for 3+ hours).

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One potential thing...
i have certainly seen folks (myself included) who have higher power outputs at lower cadence. For me, my wife and many others, a very low cadence see a lower hr by a many as 10bpm. The founder of incyd has talked about this on fast talk.

So, if your limiter is purely aerobic, this might play a factor. .
I bring this up, because you mention your outdoor validation is a flat tt (my guess, a very high cadence), vs grinding up a long hill.

Why is +1000w with a 250-ish ftp strange? When i started triathlon i could easily break 1500w with a 250 ftp, i have a background as a hockey player from 7 years old to 35. I’m now 42 years, my ftp has increased a lot but my sprint is probably weaker than it could have been 10 years ago but i can still break 1500. But im quite heavy...