I pace my IM Wales rides like this.
Let’s get out of town
Ohh the surf looks good, I’d rather be doing that!
Aid Station
Pemboke, I can smell bacon cooking
Narberth, I can smell chips
Let’s get to the Nuns at the hill
Let’s get to the Pope at the other hill
Aid station,
Downhill to Tenby, woosh
What do you mean we have to do it again? 
Power of the crowd will get me through
Sub 7hr = winning 
A lot of my adult age groupers, WKO gives TTE in the mid to high 30’s (hence doing lots of steady distance work with them as most AG’ers should) which makes “FTP” or even a true second threshold way too hard for a 40k ride, let alone with a 45 min run after. YMMV as always.
At last … someone most of us can relate too.
Sub 15 all day for FP.
Unless it’s raining, or really hot…. Or you have a bad swim or your actually using a gravel bike!
@Slacko said to me before I did my first Forestman “Ride the first lap (60km) like you are riding to the event” Never a truer word spoken and I use this saying to my athletes. Its probably the whole ride in reality for most age groupers.
Do you use WKO5? I find their mFTP calculation pretty good and much lower than most people believe their FTP is or how it tests over ramp / 20min protocols (Ramp massively favours fast twitch athletes who no way could hold that power for “about an hour” )
All of the above
But where’s the fun in that?! 
100% I have always found this on my n=1 experience as well. I can way overperform on a ramp compared to a 20. Plus they’re not half as rank as trying to hold power for 20 mins!!!
Sure you do, because a ramp test is a MAP test and the 20 min FTP should be preceded by a 5 min all out effort to be the short FTP test version. I think the ramp and 20 min tests are popular exactly because the overestimate FTP.
I take no stock in the numbers that come out of the ramp, certainly don’t base my FTP on that. But it is a good session to do for pure repeatability and seeing how you’re improving/going backwards (in that one metric).
But if i’m trying to keep up with the studs on TT, then i’ll use every dirty trick in the book to mke myself look a tiny bit better and close the gap (virtually)!
Going off topic, but there’s a good argument for the 3 minutes all out test if you want to establish knowledge about higher intensity work.
Establish critical power/speed, anaerobic reserve/capacity (whatever layman term you want to call W’) and a good idea of maximal power all in the same short test.
Caveat being I’ve never done it or used with others. But keep reading/being taught about it. Anyone else used? Reportedly British Swimming/Tri are using.
CP does seem to be gaining traction and quite a bit of recent research backing it up along with stating it’s limitations. IIRC you want a few tests of varying length to get a more accurate curve.
What would one do with said number that came out of that test? Is it the new ‘benchmark’ figure that you the multiply by varying percentages to achieve other ‘zones’ or ‘training stimulii’? Or something else?
Yup. I can “over perform” on a 25TT versus my 20 minute test.
Basically, whatever I can hold for 20 minutes indoors, I can do for an hour outdoors 
My 10TT power is always higher than my indoor 20 minute tests … although I’m unsure how I survived this week 
Look at the 10 and 25 power from 2019 … then in the middle of a four hour ride 
I’d only been cycling again for 9 months by here.
I’m almost the exact opposite!
I can hold 260 or 270 indoors no problems, but outdoors it kills me.
weirdly, found that when I’m riding alongside my wife pushing her into a headwind with my right hand on her lower back , suddenly 260 or 270 feels fine again 
That’s not uncommon to perform better when you pin a number on than in training.
You don’t use CP to calculate zones in that way. Although you can see what sort of power you can hold for a period of time, also as @Chriswim mentions it also gives you the W’ you have which could be important for hilly IM courses like Wales and Bolton.
Now you did you ask:
The W′ Balance Model
Thank you sir. Beats working on a waste strategy! 
I think my 20minute indoor power is about my 4 hour power.
That is close to what the inertia of indoor training simulates, even on the smartest turbo that can simulate more realistic situations, zwift etc. default to simulating super un-aero setups - similar to your double the frontal area and headwind. So that scenario is finally what the turbo is training you for.
I cant go into details yet but there’s been a study about incorporating that into swimming and its very successful as a prediction of your 2nd threshold. The caveats is diminishing technique due to fatigue but even so its pretty good.
the good thing about CP is that you can do tests at differing intervals, utilising various training sessions to just stick an all out 20 in or 5 etc, but this is also a downside as it takes weeks to get a preliminary curve
