Lol, feel all your pain. I ride with a group of guys, all classic roadies. They can drop me at will on any hill but I’m usually with the group when positioning for the sprint starts. Once it goes off every single one of them rides away from me…
…I’m very popular, mind, when it comes to the hard yakka of chasing breaks down. I get a good tempo workout so all good as long as the ego is parked beforehand.
They never show at any time trials, so I never get to compete on home turf.
That’s part of your problem,; riding club rides with good riders, going for Strava Segments and PRs, Climbing mountains at 110% of my FTP is where my improved biking performance is coming from. The other big FTP boost for me is Zwift - forget Ramp test, or 20 minute FTP test, my highest FTP is 1 Hour + races on Zwift, where my AP for an hour is over 300W. The motivation is not to get dropped, I just lack that level of motivation when doing an FTP test
If you’ve got power for a 2:33 you’re not hanging around! Thats FOP type splits, lots of others would dream for that.
This is what interests me about the FTP tests. They’re a test of mental strength as well as physical strength. As a rule, many people simply can’t push themselves to perform the 1 hour, or even 20 minute test to the best of their ability. The will to back off is to much.
But on the road, hanging on to the back wheel of a better cyclist, the will to continue is greater. Maybe this is where the ramp test falls down. 2 or 3 minutes pain compared to an hour.
Just find it interesting.
That was Deva last year…
It was a very fast day in all fairness the winner is a very good athlete but went sub 4…!
But Sundowner splits ( 90k ) 2:35/34 ish.
Your bike is progressing nicely… Coach said it would…
Bolton this year…!?
I agree, get out of your comfort zone to improve. I keep returning to the mantra - consider all the types of training you could do, identify the one you like the least – that’s the one you should probably be doing.
Quite the opposite I’d say, find the ones you enjoy enough that you don’t need to expend valuable mental resources.
Motivation in testing is a huge problem for many, some people can get close to their real limits, others will stop earlier - it’s similar in racing some people will never crawl over the line, or collapse at the finish, others will. You could obviously train yourself to go closer to limits in testing - but what would be the point? One of the big problems of this is because you’re so much below your physical limits you cannot tell if any particular test improvement (or drop) is due to motivational changes rather than actual performance changes.
As a person who can’t test myself anywhere near my limits on ramp tests and the such, I always much preferred identifying FTP and such like from critical power models and similar, rather than testing.
My comment was more to do with someone’s actual performance level than the testing protocol. I agree the issue with testing protocols is your motivation on the day may have more effect than any change in fitness level, not to mention being similarly rested each time, time of day, time of month etc.
But in reference to @stenard being able to sit just below FTP for 2 hours while struggling to hold 110% ftp for more than a few minutes, then that suggests to me he should be doing lots more >ftp riding, he says he avoids club rides to avoid the surges they involve. But I say embrace it.
…or just do Zwift races; they involve surges every time the gradient goes above 1%! The rest isn’t a picnic either 
My last 5 Zwift races
All were 1 hour+. If you fall off the group you will lose a ton of time, so having raced for 30+ minutes, there is huge incentive to hold onto the group, as well as taking a degree of satisfation when the group splits and you are in the first half of the split (less funny when you are in the other half)
Does Zwift simulate drafting?
ie, would you get more speed per Watts output if your in a group on Zwift?
Having never used Zwift, I’m surprised to see how close your AP & NP are. I would have expected attacks & lulls in a race but that looks pretty much balls out for the duration.
Zwift racing is pretty much just balls out all the way, with the odd big spike on inclines, when people try to split the group.
I did a 32km race earlier, and even the lead-in is full gas 
Got dropped on lap 3 of 4, and TTd to the finish alone. 6th/32 (263w 3.7/kg). Rode>300w for couple of mins, but couldn’t bridge a 3s gap, the draft effect is so biased to groups!
I thought the same
Thanks, I guess that without any slower corners where an attack might be launched, the opportunity doesn’t really present itself, other than a climb as you say.
You guys are killing it! I managed to maintain 3.1 for a year a couple of years ago. I’m ‘some way’ below that now.
I did have a guy pass me on Zwift doing 5.2 the other day. He had one of those natty little yellow flags for his ‘efforts’. 
drafting is also modelled completely wrong, genuine pack draft doesn’t exist there’s just some advantage from having someone in front, so rather than being able to sit in the middle of the pack doing 150w whilst the guy on the front does 300, you maybe only have to do 270, same as if it was a 2 up. In a real pack you probably spend half your time freewheeling, if you freewheel in zwift you’re off the back in seconds.
It’s nothing like a real race, it’s more of a hilly time trial, where you lift the watts occasionally to go up a hill, but you’re still basically pedalling the whole time. It’s a shame as you end up still training steady state really, of course anything other than a trainer with a motor in would not be representative anyway for different reasons, so it might be that it’s a reasonable compromises.
A few weeks ago Maryka was building a phone mount thing out of some thermo-plastic and a garmin mount so she could test some cornering thing in zwift - maybe if they added that to the road crit too forcing you to slow in a corner and accelerate out it would be better.
Currently at 2.75. 260/94.
Want to get close to 4 by IMW and also have a triple ascent of Ventoux booked the week before to drag myself up.
Never going to be 75kg but have been 80kg so just need to get there and close to 320w FTP 
Garmin has downgraded me to 263w, and perhaps I should have rejected it. The ‘issue’ is that if you do a Zwift race, it simply takes the best 20 min segment, and calculates it from that. So not from a dedicated CP20. So if you’re holding 269w for 20 min in a 50 min almost flat-out race (me yesterday) then your FTP will drop from 267.
It keeps your number ‘current’ though
I’ve never really got my head round that with Garmin. If it suggests a higher FTP then fair enough as you must have done a better 20min segment than your current setting so makes sense.
How does it know to suggest a lower one though, you may have just been doing an easier session? Is it something to do with HR as it doesn’t do it after every easy ride so it must take more into account.
