I’m just wrapping up my second season of triathlon. This year, I followed the training peaks virtual coach fairly closely and I saw huge improvements in all disciplines. Throughout the year, I saw my performance on graded exercise tests improve, and my race times are in another realm than they were last year. The only thing that I haven’t been able to do this season was improve my FTP. When I tested back in December, it was 210W, and, every time I’ve tested since, it’s been 210W (fwiw, I’m 5’5" and average 57kg). I’ve tried searching, but I haven’t found any advice that I can figure out how to apply, so, I wanted to ask this question: at what point of the season should I be looking to improve my FTP, and does anyone have any good workouts/strategies for doing so? Any advice would be appreciated.
I think its best to do early season timed with reduced run volume. My FTP has stayed flat since April. I think im just running too much to get the quality I need to move it up. I can do plenty of tempo, but more than 1 harder ride a week just crushes me. Some of it too is adapting to more trainijng volume.
Can you lay down your normal “bike” week and what your run volume is for a given week? Just sort of a day in a life…
motoguy - be careful with statements like that. (That’s where ‘slowtwitchers’ start to believe increases aren’t possible) If your FTP hasn’t increased over 4 months you might want to reevaluate your training. Have you been tracking CTL? Are you doing targeted bike workouts, for time, in certain zones?
Run way easier or less, and dose yourself with harder bike efforts a few minutes at a pop. Make it burn a few times, then do it again a couple of days later. Keep repeating. If you give yourself enough recovery, your power will go up.
Can you lay down your normal “bike” week and what your run volume is for a given week? Just sort of a day in a life…
Until you asked that question, I never even considered it. Looks like over the past 8 months, I’ve averaged just 3 hours a week biking divided between 3-4 workouts/week. I was surprised when I saw how low that number was. More recently I’ve been closer to 6 hours a week with less time spent running as I’ve dealt with some minor injuries. Since February, the workouts have pretty much been one zone 4 hill workout, one zone 3 tempo workout, a short recovery and an endurance brick. Running has averaged 2 hours/week, and I was likely doing more running earlier in the year when I couldn’t bike outdoors and didn’t have aches and pains.
After writing that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is spend more time on the bike targeting zone 4. And if that’s the answer, that was already pretty much in the plan. Like I said, this was only year 2, so I was being conservative with the hours I put in.
I managed to raise my CP20 last winter over 50W´s. At March it was around 340W (FTP 315ísh W). The previous summer it had been around 260-270W. I concentrated november and december in biking and did sweetspot sets on rollers at least 3-4 times a week and ditched all the z1-z2 work.
January to march my focus was in swimming, but I still kept on doing those sweetspot sets 2-3 times a week. Then I managed to record that 340W.
I had been running all the time, but nothing hard. In april took more running in to the program and after that the bike power has decreased some (to CP20 310-320W), but still it has been way better than before.
I managed to raise my CP20 last winter over 50W´s. At March it was around 340W (FTP 315ísh W). The previous summer it had been around 260-270W. I concentrated november and december in biking and did sweetspot sets on rollers at least 3-4 times a week and ditched all the z1-z2 work.
January to march my focus was in swimming, but I still kept on doing those sweetspot sets 2-3 times a week. Then I managed to record that 340W.
I had been running all the time, but nothing hard. In april took more running in to the program and after that the bike power has decreased some (to CP20 310-320W), but still it has been way better than before.