Bike Test - Uphill ?

imc1792

Looking for comments on doing my bike test all uphill. Why? For one thing it is very safe; wide shoulder, slower moving traffic, no lights etc.

Not a steep climb i can usually average 11-14mph.

Thoughts, comments?

chris malone

Sounds like a nice venue and one where your watts can be derived from a good cadence and not just a slow mash that you would never duplicate in a race. I generally shave about 5 to 10 watts from an uphill tt and use that number for my everyday ft number. But that's me, Mr. Vegas.
Crush it!

jhbinsc

I have done many FTP tests all uphill when in mountains. Safer is better IMHO and see no major problems as long as you can meet all your wattage goals in training.

Jeff Sullivan

I also like the uphill testing - partially cause I have a great venue 10 min ride from my house (vs. drive 25 min to the flats). However I remember reading a post from coach R about the need to subtract 3-5% off final uphill wattage. I don't remember the exact reasons why but something to do with it's easier to generate higher watts when climbing vs. on the flats.

Coach Rich

Testing uphill is great, for many reasons, but you need to be honest with yourself and use your head to derive an good, flat, steady state in the aerobars FTP from it. It takes a lot of experience with yourself on a variety of course and much power data to do this, I feel.

I have two courses to choose from and this is what I do:

• Chantry Flats -- 3.2 miles @ 5-6%. Takes me anywhere from 18-22' to do this, depending on fitness and fatness, with watts from 260 to 345 (I think I was on crack that day). I've done this on the road bike in the tops, tri bike on the hoods, tri bike in the aerobars, etc. If I'm in road bike training mode with much climbing I'll just subtract 5% from my watts and call that my FTP. If I want to get an FTP to better suit a wider variety of terrain and training, I'll subtract 7%. If I'm in tri bike mode, I'll do this on the tri bike either do my best to stay in the aerobars or say fuggit. Depends on the day. I'll then subtract 10% to get a flat course, in the aerobars FTP that's on the safe side.
• Glendora Mtn Road -- 8.7 miles at 5-6%. Takes me 38:50 (again, a crack day) to low-mid 40's. I can do this in the aerobars but more often then not, especially if I'm TT'ing with a group, I just use any means necessary to get up the hill as fast as I can. I'll generally subtract 0 to 5% from this number.

In general, my personal preference is to sorta-test and SWAG my FTP for the majority of the season, then dialing it in much more tightly, and on the conservative side, much closer to my races. In the end, what I'm looking for for the entire season with the exeption of race day, is a number I put into Poweragent and then into the Joule which makes the numbers I see on the dial when training make sense.