I have done FF 4 or 5 times before. However, this one will be a little different. I had a huge drop-off in numbers since my last FF in May. I just finished a 4 week FTP block so I kinda know what range to hold for FTP. My weakness is typically MAP and I know that will be miserable. The FTP block had very few MAP efforts so I am kinda clueless on just how big to go.
My old #'s from May will be of little help in pacing. Are there any HR guidelines? Or, I can just “start” at 20% over what I THINK my FTP will be (although that is way down)…
Thanks!
"A well-paced 5-minute effort is one where 2.5 minutes in you start thinking, “I might just be able to hold this, but it will be close”. If you get to the 2-minute mark and start questioning whether you’ll make it out alive, you went out a little too hot. If you get to the 3-minute mark and think, “I have some energy left in the tank, I need to up the pace” then you didn’t start out hard enough. That said, starting a little bit easier will get you closer to a perfectly paced 5-minute effort than blowing up spectacularly 3 minutes in.
As far as cadence goes, your best bet is to be a little higher than what you consider your “optimal cadence”. If you normally sit at 90 RPM for hard efforts, ramp it up to 100 RPM. Remember, you still have a 20-minute effort and a 1-minute all out effort on deck after this. If you’re grinding out a big gear at a low cadence you can very easily thrash your legs, which will make the next effort that much worse."
As an alternative, you could just do the Half Monty and get new MAP and FTP with a lot less pain.
If your MAP is normally 120% of your FTP, then this is probably a reasonable option. Use that as a starting point and adjust up or down slightly based on how you feel.
20% over FTP is quite a lot, or would be for me. I’d be inclined to start at +15% and increase it over the interval. I’d also spin a bit quicker and be aero so if needs be I always still have an escape route (normal cadence & sat up).
I’d personally ignore heart rate as I find HR goes up in tapering for a test so I always achieve a higher HR than is usually possible.
The step bit of half monty is good for target setting but it’s a bit late for that now.
I find MAP hardest to pace as well - esp of FF (or some other 5 min Max efforts have been happening fairly regularly)
If you have your ole numbers, and you have the ratio from back then … (from ftp that is) then you could use that ratio and if you find you’re still at a decent cadence at 2.5 mins and only feeling miserable you can increase it a wee bit or v/v.
I’d that’s where you picked 1.2 from already then cool plan.
(There’ll be plenty FF time
In your life so if anything goes awry you can do it again in 6w and so on. It’ll still give you a sense of where you want to set your workout settings for your workouts)
At the start of FF in the on screen notes I think it says that most people can hold between 120-130% of their FTP for the MAP interval. I’m very close to the top end of that range, but MAP is my strength. So maybe check back on your previous known FTP/MAP ratio and apply that to your predicted current FTP. Or just go with the 120% FTP rule of thumb and see how that goes.
I’ll echo Glen’s last point. It sounds like your uncertainty/focus is on your MAP/FTP numbers. It may be worth doing the Half Monty instead of the FF this time around. If you’re really wanting to do the FF, do the Full Frontal Prep plan after doing the HM and crush the FF when you have more confidence about how to pace it!
Hi @John_B , I did HM about a month ago - kind of. I got a MAP out of it (329, which I doubt) and then my HR monitor failed and I couldn’t finish the controlled effort portion for FTP. I have been doing the FTP block since then, with a little manual adjustment of my FTP target early on. Based on HR and RPE, my FTP a few weeks ago was 240ish (down from 324 in may ). So, a little over 30% down. I hope to have recovered a bit since. My MAP was 373 in May, so if it dropped to 329 (HM result) then it is “only” down a bit over 10%. Pretty sure I can’t hold 329 for 5 minutes in my current state, esp. as MAP is historically a weakness according to previous testing.
Long story short, since I just did HM, I’d like to go forward w FF at this time.
Basically went well ! Good news for me (although a bit anticlimactic) is that I found a weird calibration error when warming up before FF. I cal’ed 3 times and it is repeating now with power levels that kinda match corresponding RPE’s from past years. I got 286 FTP and 341 MAP, which are ~10 percent down from May, which is a normal dropoff for me. I seem to mostly ride for fun/unstructured in the summer and fall.
More importantly, my HR and effort seemed pretty durn high and I don’t think I could have done more so I’m pretty happy with the result. @Glen.Coutts it was actually good that you asked for a result - it’s a nice encouragement early on to feel that I “owe the team an answer” so quitting is not an option! By 80-90% of the way through I just don’t want the effort to be for nothing, so that is encouragement enough. Thanks all!
Good to hear @jackriddle2. For the record, I wasn’t looking for your specific numbers, which are great btw, as much as I was looking to hear back on how your pacing went. Way to go and get after it! You may now return to your regularly scheduled suffering
). So, a little over 30% down. I hope to have recovered a bit since. My MAP was 373 in May, so if it dropped to 329 (HM result) then it is “only” down a bit over 10%. Pretty sure I can’t hold 329 for 5 minutes in my current state, esp. as MAP is historically a weakness according to previous testing.
thanks for sharing.