Hi all. I wonder if someone can help me understand something:
Background. I’m 53, male and have been riding for a good few years, self coached and have a modestly good understanding of periodisation/training, HR/Power etc.
Just would like to sound you guys out who have much more experience. Been using intervals.icu since march and it’s very good!!
Since December I’ve been doing ~5-6 hrs a week of z2 HR training to get back into some fitness. Around mid april, I started to do a little more z3/4 work using the power meter after a previous FTP test (coggan) which came up short of 190w.
I added two sessions in a Vo2Max set of intervals (5 x 3min 120%ftp) and threshold ( 3 x 10m Z4/90-105% ftp) which I seemed to be adapting to, mixed in with a Z3 tempo session ( 2 x 15m@ z3 ). the rest of the workouts between intervals are at Z1 recovery. My average riding time has increased by an hour or so 7-8h p/w in the last month which is mostly the extra z1/2 i’ve been riding.
My weekends are mostly z1-3, which I’ve managed to strech out to 2-3+ hrs, some social etc. Working this around a 3 on: 1 off recovery taper week ( less a couple of weeks where i had been unable to do as much /work/life getting in the way ).
Most of the volume ratio is ~75/25 - 80/20, as i planned it as such.
As expected I’ve seen an improvment in fitness [ on the bike ] and designated this week as my taper. I’m tracking wellness using Whoop which is present on each day, usually most of my sessions are green with a good HRV+low rested hr.
Yesterday’s workout was the FTP Lite on Zwift which I had not used before against that nagging feeling to run the usual coggan one (Which hurts like hell ) and didnt realise that the test cap’s out at 250w, which initally i wasn’t sure i’d even get to.
Which, it’s fair to say, surprisingly i hit everything to the point where 250w@1m my HR was 193 (max is 200, im a high beater ] I feel that i could probably have gone another minute at 260w before but i cant say for sure.
Zwift predicts my ftp @187w, which is less than what it was last month despite the extra training - which seemed odd, but on reflection that i came to in my conclusions.
My Questions
- In my taper week, as expected I can see my fitness and fatige drop a bit and freshness goes , but today and yesterday the fitness graph hasn’t updated to show yesterdays load [despite refreshing the browser ] and I’m not sure why?
- My conclusion from yesterday is one of, or both,
-
i didnt feel that I wasn’t max’d out after 250w and should probably have used the proper coggan test and tried to hold a more steady/optimal power.
-
my recovery wasn’t optimal (whoop HRV/RHR was 36:59 with readiness of 71)
Good recovery /fresh is usually ~58 hrv, 40 hrv and readiness > 90, although i felt ready to do the test.
I will probably go again tomorrow or saturday if I can using the coggan test.
Here is the session from yesterday from icu:
- Somtimes it feels like my body lies to me when what the data shows me vs how i feel/ perceived effort, adversely or conversely.
Have any of you guys had a similar kind of experience with both test.
Addendum: My understanding of what Zwift calculates a predicted FTP from, is 75% of the power completed from the last minute, had I reached 260 it would have produced the following values.
250w/187 ftp
260w/ 195 ftp
270w/ 202 ftp
Whereas coggan’s result is 95% of the 20minute average.
Thanks in advance, have more diagrams/data to share if required…Daniel.