Another alternate FTP tracker - Critical Power Fit in Golden Cheetah
Hey all-
First, I should make clear that I am NOT advocating anything like not doing our normal OS FTP testing. There's something very valuable about the mental thing of having a date that the testing is done, a very standard test, and a race-like exercise for a workout and a focus.
But I am curious about whether other people have observed what I have, i.e., that the Critical Power fit in Golden Cheetah correlates extremely well with the test values you get. (For those who do not play with GC, it's a fit of the approximately 1 min - 2 hour region of your maximum performance graph.) Because of the nature of those charts, if you are always doing the exact same kind of intervals, then you get distortion (e.g., we don't get any high power short time data while doing FTP intervals). Nonetheless, over the last several months, I've found that its critical power fit very closely tracks how I've been testing in our normal protocol. It gives me a number just a very few watts lower than I test using the RnP test.
If this is valid, it could be an extremely useful tool for mid-season when tests are sparser and harder to do well...and you just need to SWAG where you are... load up a months worth of data, and boom.
William
Comments
Yep, I do use Race Day Apollo which is identical to GC, both written by Skiba. GC is an open source, which you know. I have tested in the past using Monod CP protocol per Skiba variation, most likely will keep testing that way. I don't advocate it either but for consistency reasons, I will test that way. I test 20min Max, 48hours later test 3min Max. It comes out very close to other testing methods. As I use Race Day, makes more sense for me. Also testing 3-5min gives you an idea what your VO2max component is. There is a possibility to raise your 3-5min max power or VO2max component relatively higher than 20min Max, which leads to reduction in FTP based on Monod's curve. You know that already, I assume. So, interpreting results gets a little obscured. This scenario is entirely possible after the week 9-14, where OS focus is on VO2max work. Just have to keep that in mind.