Out Season: Week 5 - Tuesday Bike Test To Determine Virtual Power

This morning I found myself back on the bike. My quads were still a bit sore from the long run Sunday, but I felt pretty good considering that I taught all day, coached a game, helped at wrestling for my son, and then coached robotics. I did not get home until 9 pm.

Today I was to do the following workout

MS: 2 x 12' (4') @ 95-100%/Zone4/Hard. Remainder of any time you have available (if any, not required) @ 80-85%/Zone3/Mod-Hard. 

I decided that today would be a good day to do a bike test. I tested during week one with my HR, but after reading so much about TR on the Endurance Nation forums I decided to take the plunge to the power world. I created a workout for the bike test that followed the testing protocols

WU: 10' easy, then 8' building from 50% FTP to 100% FTP in 2' increments, 2' easy. Fine to use estimated FTP if this is your first test. The intent here is to get in a good warmup, so use your best judgement. 

Test 1 -- Vo2 Max Test: ride 5' at the best (hardest) effort you can sustain for the full 5'. A good target is 120% of your estimated FTP. Recover 1: 10' easy spin, stretch, recovery. 

Test 2 -- Functional Threshold Power (FTP) Test: time trial for 20' at the best (hardest) effort you can sustain for the full 20'. 

Recover 2: Minimum 5' easy spinning.

I built this workout into TR and started up. I later realized I did not do it completely right as my 5 minute test was mixed in with my warmup when I tried to look at the data.

This is where Endurance Nation is amazing. The group of people on this team are top notch. I simply shared my TR data and asked for help. I really had no idea what data to use and plug in to find my power zones and such. One of the EN people(Russell) not only helped me data, but gave me breakdowns and noted some observations which are all things that I use and learn from in my my training. He was a huge help as well as so many other people who have helped me the last month.

Here is my TrainerRoad data. I am not sure how to read this and I think I messed up my workout program because I don't have a breakdown of data for the 5 minute test.

So with the help of others I was able to gather that my FTP is 202. FTP is Functional Threshold Power.

 FTP - take 95% of the NP (normalized power) for the 20m interval: .95*213=202.


My VO2 Max is 245

And your VO2M is 245, which is quite close to 120%FTP. Assess how you felt after the interval. So - for your FTP intervals, try to keep your power between 195 and 205 with NP coming out right about 200. For your 30/30s, try and put your power between 240 and 250 with NP for each interval coming out at 245.

My legs were tired during the runs, but they feel fine now. I sweated like crazy and it felt good to get a great workout in. I wanted to test today so that I can be converted to power as soon as possible so I can chart my progress. Week 8 is a test week so I will see where I am at that stage in a few weeks.

I am off to another great start to training. Here is to working on my eating and getting my weight back down after the holiday splurge!!


I am not sure if the numbers I crunched out are signs of a strong bike or not, but I look forward to making great gains in this OS. It has been awesome so far!