Test indoors and out or can I...

jimmy augustine

This time of year, I am doing some bike sessions on trainer and some outside.
Testing on the trainer is easy. I'm wondering if I should test outside as well. Cuz I did 150min abp today over my indoor FTP.
Is there any way to guesstimate an ftp# from a longer abp ride?

morpheus

IMO...no 'need' to test both.

You can, but you'll soon see what your delta is. It won't take long at all. RPE during an indoors test should be same feeling outside when doing FTP work.

zwuba

Did I read that correct - you did 3h outdoor having a higher Avg-Power than your (indoor) FTP is??
When I'm correct assuming you are using the same PowerMeter in- and outdoors you MUST retest IMHO because it is simply impossible to ride 3hours at a level you should be capable of riding 60min at max!

As Chris already said it's not "necessary" to repeat FTP test for indoor and outdoor everytime but in your case the gap is just way too high ... just replace the 1h FTP bike workout with the test and you're fine

Brenda Ross

I asked the same thing in my JOS and here is what wickedly smart member William Jenks said to me:

Indoors/outdoors totally depends on what you want out of your test.

If you want to mark your progress through the OS and close the book on it, then clearly you should test indoors. Apples to apples. This is the cleanest thing for understanding what your OS did for you, but it means you'll need to test outdoors separately at some point fairly shortly. If you test indoors, you should very clearly use the same test you were using before, which I assume to be the 5/20.

If your race is getting reasonably close (say, 10 weeks or less) and there's not a test on the schedule for early in that sequence, maybe you go ahead and test outside because your higher priority is setting those power numbers for your outdoor riding. [You can temporarily change your plan to take a look!] As for 5/20 or 20/2/20, pick your poison, but choose the one you're going to use between now and your race.

jimmy augustine

@Stefan - you did read me right. I think that two things have happened- I have improved over the past few weeks after 2 months of very little riding while I prepped for a marathon and, my numbers are much lower on the trainer than they are on the road.

Going forward, I will be on the trainer some and outside some. My plan calls for a test next week and I plan to do it indoors because it will still be dark out.
Longer term, the outdoor number will be an important one to have as well though.

I remember once seeing a pod cast by coach R where he looked at the WKO power distribution bell curve and pointed to a place where it fell off and said that FTP was most likely there. I guess I was hoping that someone would tell me that.

After all this, I guess we can classify this post as yet another "can I get an ftp number without doing a test"? The answer is always not really...
thx!

zwuba

Posted By jimmy augustine on 07 Apr 2013 08:05 AM


...

I remember once seeing a pod cast by coach R where he looked at the WKO power distribution bell curve and pointed to a place where it fell off and said that FTP was most likely there. I guess I was hoping that someone would tell me that.



After all this, I guess we can classify this post as yet another "can I get an ftp number without doing a test"? The answer is always not really...

thx!

Yess indeed it is possible to approximate your actual FTP by reviewing your PowerData file from your ride ... this is what we understand under "Critcal Power Curve" ... WKO, TrainingPeaks, GoldenCheeta will create that automatically for you then just move to the 60min mark on the X-axis and read the value - THAT's it

... but if you didn't perform a continuously hard effort of 60min you should take the strongest 20min effort and subtract 5% from this value. Programs like the 3 i mentioned above will also do that for you