You’re asking the wrong question(s) to solve the problem you presented imo. You’re taking a can’t see the forest through the trees approach, especailly in light of this comment you made “In a typical ride, I might loose contact after a 1-2 min hill, and then have to work my arse for 5 minutes to rejoin, which I do often, thus burning a lot of energy.”
That’s not a 1 min power issue even if you’re lacking 1 min power.
Hear me out.
My premise is the higher your FTP the easier it is to do these efforts, recover from them, hang on/around when these efforts happen or if you recognize someone is about to blow, put in an effort yourself and get rid of them. It doesn’t do you any good to cover these first few efforts only to get shelled out the back later. IMO training :05 &1 min power without figuring out how to raise your FTP is ass backwards. Here’s why.
If you’re required to close multiple gaps in the race and these are going to take anywhere from :05-3-5-10 min to close the higher your FTP the lower the physiological ask to close the gaps.
For example you’re :07 back from a group of 5 leaving T1. You have to put in a ~ 400-550w effort for~ :20 to latch on, could be a bit longer, maybe a touch shorter but I’d bank on longer unless the group is putzing along.
If you FTP is 230 then that is a big ask AND the hole that leaves you in will take longer to recover from, while you’re still racing. Therefore you’re also susceptible to a savvy person in the group recognizing that and surging, causing you to make another big ask of yourself to stay in the group or the group hits a 180 or a corner and bam you’re back on the gas. Sooner or later your body is going to say FU and you’re going out the back. It’s hard to TT back into the group when you’ve burned your matches.
If your FTP is 285 the physiological ask is smaller and you’re better able to handle AND recover from the effort(s). While it’s best not to light those matches to begin with, the higher your FTP if you light a match it’s often a matchbook match not one of those long fireplace matches.
(this also plays out for the run. All these well above FTP efforts on the bike will ding your run, don’t forget that)
If the group splits and you have to jump on the gas for :03-:05 the higher your FTP the less damaging this effort is, the less lactate you’ll produce and have to combust.
This is also a situation where pack awareness really comes into play. For my athletes that race DL, both pro & AG, I counsel that being aware of what’s going on ahead of you can mitigate some of these surges.
Again if you’re FTP is 230 and you have to jump to 350 for a few seconds to bridge that gap it’s a bigger ask and takes a bigger physiological toll on you vs someone with 285 as an FTP.
Then if you’ve driven FTP up, then it’s time to worry about 1 min power.
While you do need to train that ability (~1 min), raising your FTP allows you to cover a lot of the physiological demands/reduce the negative impact from these efforts, allows you to sit in the group more comfortable than others as these efforts happen or even surge coming out of a corner ripping the group apart.
With the ebb & flow of DL age group racing I’ve never really had anyone have the need to do a specific focus on :05 or 1 min power, especially as their FTP went up. Sure their are instances where it was needed, yet a block focused on that, never. It’s adjunct training not the focus of training
Worry about raising your FTP then worry about raising your 5min (another conversation we can have) 1min and lower duration power.
thoughts?
