#ftptest

. 久々にzwiftでFTPやってみた。 きつい。 きつい。 後半、ftp中だってのに回すのやめて水分補給したし💦 . そして今日も友達は不調で、一緒に乗ることはできず。 残念。 . . . #ロードバイク #ロードバイク女子 #ロードハ .. #ロードバイクJP

@ama_urchin この投稿をInstagramで見る ama_urchin(@ama_urchin)がシェアした投稿 . 久々にzwiftでFTPやってみた。 きつい。 きつい。 後半、ftp中だってのに回すのやめて水分補給したし💦 . そして今日も友達は不調で、一緒に乗ることはできず。 残念。 . . . #ロードバイク #ロードバイク女子 #ロードバイク初心者 #ロードバイク大人女子 #ロードバイクのある風景 #ロードバイク好きな人と繋がりたい #ロードバイクのある生活 #ロードバイクある生活 #ロードバイク仲間欲しい #ロードバイク乗りと繋がりたい ソロライド #ぼっちライド #3本ローラー #quickmotion #冬トレ #インドア #roadbike #roadbikelife #roadbikegirl…

I tried a different hardwood ride last night.  Serious athletes have all sorts of numbers to use that help figure out training.  FTP is one.  Functional Threshold Power all spelled out.  It is the constant power a cyclist should sustain for a full hour.  Go over that and you go red.  It is literally a pain to measure, so I have a bunch of fudge factors to estimate mine.  It is an arbitrary number as very few athletic endeavors take exactly one hour.  But they had to pick something to use.

It was not surprising I over estimated mine.  Perhaps it is better to say I estimated what I should do in summer, and I aint there yet.  My 8 minute hill ride is a sustained effort for 7 to 8 minutes.  Last try I was around 250 watts and I have done almost 300 watts on that segment.  So I guessed my FTP is around 240 Watts.  Nope not yet.

Well backing up a bit everybody is different.  Your size and type of muscle mix is your own.  What works for person X may be completely wrong for person Y.  My body was always chunky and fast twitch.  I could sprint.  I could leg press more weight than the high school weight machine had. ( obviously when I was much younger.)  So now I find myself in an endurance sport that my basic body type was not optimum for.

Training changes you.  Doing it long enough your can totally reform your body as it adapts to what you are doing.  Do it hard enough and you get substantially better. I have succeeded over more than 14 years of this.  I have built a new body.  I still have chunks and a bit too much of that diesel fuel, but I can ride up mountains.

I ride my bike and can monitor my heart rate, and now my wattage in real time.  The trouble I have is motivation to actually push hard.  I mean really hard.

HIITs are good as the efforts are relatively short. Push very hard then rest.  I am good at rest. So this different thing was sort of the opposite of a HIIT.  It was an FTP drill.  Basically I had to run up to my estimated power of 240 watts and hold it for only 110 seconds at a time. The whole session was 20 minutes. Hey that's easy if you are supposed to do it for an hour, but there was a thing. At the end of every 110 seconds there were 10 seconds of a push to double the FTP power.  Then back down to 240 effectively no rest over 2 minutes of close to maximum then over maximum effort.  Then repeat.

In my head I knew I could do 8 minute hill so 4 of these cycles should be relatively doable.  I had to do 7.  I did not make it.  I held on for three then it became really hard.  I faded on the 4rth and 5th and rested on the 6th then tried one pathetic push on the 7th.  OK you could say I got half way.

The thing is on a hill you have a simple goal.  Get to the top.  Get it over with, then go on.  I have not been able to transfer that motivation to indoor riding.  I knew that this session was supposed to hurt a bit.  If your legs aren’t aching you are doing it wrong.  I was doing it wrong or at least my body defense mechanism of “why the fuck are you doing this” was cutting in.

I keep telling myself that training is trying to do things you cannot do so that you will be able to do them.  I plan on doing two more such sessions this week and a longer weekend ride.  We will see how it goes.  If I do get better then I will have more in the tank come summer.

As far as Lotus is concerned I am comfortably faster than the Charlie group average but I still want to improve a bit.  Lotus is for sharing and helping people to learn.