On this, for zwift in particular, FTP is largely irrelevant unless you are doing workouts that are based on a % of FTP. For that purpose, FTP is (as I understand) intended to be the standard definition of FTP, being the power you can hold in a quasi steady state. It’s generally “roughly one hour”, but can be above or below depending on the individual and their specific training to date.
Every notification I have had from zwift has been in a given ride where 95% of max 20min power has exceeded my prior FTP, and then the revised FTP it reports is the 95% of max 20min power number.
W/kg in terms of race categories is meant to be your FTP, as calculated by the above or some other method, divided by current weight. If you are doing a really short race, or a really long race, that’s largely irrelevant as to which w/kg cat you should enter. This is the approach adopted by zwiftpower.
56 minute race, for the first 20mins I was sitting on the front dragging the lead pack, the tough part was after 20mins still maintaining over 300w for another 35 minutes. Finished in 5th place as I didn’t have any legs left for the sprint
I was a bit surprised when I saved my ride that Zwift reported my FTP as 352. FTP should be 95% of 20 minute effort, I think my 20 min effort was 369w… which is a surprise to me: I was trying to keep the power over 350w, and I know that the first 5min and last 5min were in the region of 400w, but 369w is pretty massive. To be completely honest I don’t know where it came from, I was using my Assioma pedals, I calibrated them just before the ride, so no errors there (I’ve not seen any strange readings on the Assiomas). I’ve certainly had a light week in terms of intensity and was feeling really good.
I think that this will be my FTP high water mark, I don’t think I will ever see anything this high again
Here are my stats from Training Peaks: I thought that the 5min would be higher
The 1 hour includes around 4 minutes cool down after the race. I manages 331w avg for 56mins
Superb. I like to think I don’t need anything but the numbers to motivate me when I’m doing an FTP test but I wonder would a zwift race with people to chase and hang onto make a difference? Judging by my recent virtual running race shambles, maybe a proper racing environment might make more of a difference than I think…
That’s an interesting one: Today I was’t hanging onto anyone for the first 20mins… in fact everyone else was hanging onto me (and probably thinking what is this idiot doing), so I actually got no additional motivation, I was riding purely based on the numbers. If there was another super strong rider who was pushing me would I have gone harder? I don’t think so
I did my regular pre race warm up, 5 mins easy, 5 mins ramp from 150w to 250w, 2 mins easy, 1 min 300w, 1 min 350w, then easy spin for 5 mins in race pen
I’m not sure, I went all out for 20mins, pretty much max effort. I decided that if I could keep up with the group I would continue to ride. Maybe the rest of the group was also struggling with the pace I was setting, because I was able to keep up with the tail of the lead peloton, pushing around 270w. After 5 mins or so, I found that I had recovered pretty well, which was lucky as the lead group split and I managed to stay with the front of the split.
First was the national 100, 235W and got me 4:27, but it was a breezy day, rolling course and heavy coarse tarmac. Marcin did 3:24 though and won by about 10 minutes.
Second was on the A66 just outside Keswick a week later. 237W got me 4:09, which included at least a 1 minute stop to switch etap batteries as the rear went flat. Smooth DC surface, hardly any wind, not much traffic and reasonably flat course. Finished thinking I could have gone a bit harder as well.
I’m not the most aero, but I did have my Endura skinsuit on the second week. Probaby should have used my disk as well, fairly sure both were just with 404’s.
Brilliant. Well done
Always funny when you do 120 tss in an hour when 100 tss is meant to be an hour at threshold!!
So you need to adjust in TP now. Has it given you a new ftp yet?
Matt fixes his FTP for TSS purposes for the season (or something like that). I’ve always found that a bit strange, and we’ve talked about it on here before, but guess he will retain that approach for consistency with prior years.
