Today was an interesting day because I slept in again. This late fall season has really lent itself to sleeping in between the storms, snow, rain, sleet, etc. I am actually enjoying it for the first time in my life. Anyway, I usually work out pretty early in the morning but I didn’t get to it until two in the afternoon.
Today’s goal was to get some cardio in on my rollers so I decided I might as well take advantage of the TheSufferFest Rubber Glove session. The intent of the session is to determine your Functional Threshold Power or FTP for short. Now, I didn’t know too much about this but I went with it. I followed the video instructions, warmed up, slowly and steadily increased my level of effort. At about 25 minutes into the session, we were instructed to do a cool down for a bit and then we started to really ramp it up. Every two minutes I had my daughter record my heart rate. This went on until I hit about 60 minutes. I was pretty fatigued I must admit especially around minute 50. It was damn hard. The video does a good job of providing queuing and motivational statements. That coupled with some humor makes an hour go by in breeze.
So after I finished the workout, I sat down to add up all the numbers and average them out. Then I multiplied the by product by 95% to determine my FTP. My number is 138.5. I have no idea if this is good or not. However, thinking about it, I think I will retested periodically to see if there is change in that number. This may be an indicator of ability to sustain an increased load and to see how it changes over time.
Now that being said, I am sure there are more scientific methods to determine FTP, but from my understanding it should also be used a gauge when determine how hard to push on the indoor trainer. I think what I may do is also look at the FTP number against other average heart rates from Strava and MyGarmin and see what correlations I can make. But as well know your fitness changes dynamically over time.
More to ponder I suppose… Crank Out!
silveronecp 