Hence why I am averaging the two results 
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Just to post back here almost a year on from my original post.
I started indoor training in earnest this January having slowly and deliberately got back into cycling last summer/autumn, being very cautious not to push to early and injure myself. I followed a general 12 week plan which went well and generally didn’t feel too hard. I followed this with a custom mixed FTP/VO2 plan and some longer outdoor endurance rides when the weather played ball (in the UK this spring, it rarely did!). Having finished my structured training last week before an event I completed today, my FTP had gone from 175W to 240W, but equally as importantly my endurance (i.e. fatigue resistance over many hours) has significantly improved.
In general I enjoyed the SYSTM plans and they obviously increased my fitness fairly well, though I think they could have been harder and it would be nice if (during a long plan) FTP values etc. were automatically raised as the weeks progressed. I think I got more fitness quicker using Zwift plans previously (I was wrong in my original post - my old peak FTP (following Zwift plan) was 290W)) however I also think it burnt me out for a month or two after that so there’s probably a happy medium somewhere there.
Thanks for all the replies and help here, happy cycling all!
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First, good on you! Improved fitness is improved fitness. But yeah, I’ve had to come to grips with this as well - the fitness mountain is a long, slow slog, especiallly as you age up.
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@BobbyB Congrats on the gains! Yeah - the big challenge now is maintaining and slowly adding gains but also avoiding dropping into the red for too long and burning out. I have been sticking faithfully to an 80/20 polarized plan and find that even thought I am under threshold most of the time I am still seeing gains and increasing TTE. That strategy allows me to do more hours of training because I don’t need as much recovery from the endurance work.
@BobbyB You can do this manually but be very slow and deliberate - only a watt or two and not very often. SYSTM doesn’t currently have the capability to provide an eFTP but you can find one on intervals.icu or TrainingPeaks as a way to check whether your instincts are correct.
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Looks like you ran into our old friend: Overtraining. Keep going and it’s a long road back to any sort of fitness. I did this over a decade ago and it’s not been pretty.
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