I Have Made an Error

I consider myself a pretty tough guy.

I've pushed myself physically harder than most people probably ever will. I've run a marathon. I've finished a 100K ultramarathon. I've spent a good portion of my life voluntarily doing things that hurt.

So when today's training called for a 20-minute FTP test, I wasn't particularly concerned.

It's twenty minutes on a bike.

Twenty minutes.

How bad could it possibly be?

As it turns out: very.

An FTP test is designed to establish your Functional Threshold Power — essentially the highest cycling power you can sustain for an extended period. For the 20-minute version, you ride as hard as you can sustainably manage for twenty straight minutes. Your average power is then used to estimate your FTP.

Simple enough.

Except a properly executed FTP test is vile.

It isn't twenty minutes of "hard cardio." It's finding the highest output you can sustain while your entire body spends the second half filing increasingly urgent objections.

The experience went something like this:

Minute 3: This isn't so bad.

Minute 7: Okay. This is unpleasant.

Minute 12: I have made an error.

Minute 16: Time has stopped.

Minute 19: There is no God here.

Minute 20: I discovered that sixty seconds can apparently last approximately six fiscal quarters.

I finished.

Barely.

My average heart rate for the twenty-minute effort was 167 bpm, with an average cadence of 76 rpm. When the suffering finally ended, the bike showed an average power of 151 watts.

That put my measured FTP at:

143 watts.

And there it is.

Not an estimate. Not a TrainingPeaks projection. Not me guessing how fit I am on a bicycle.

A baseline.

Is 143 watts impressive? No.

And that's exactly why I'm glad I did the test.

I'm still a very inexperienced cyclist. I've got an enormous amount of room to improve my power, cadence, efficiency and ability to hold that power over 56 miles before getting off the bike and running a half marathon.

But now we have a number.

143 watts.

Six or eight weeks from now, I'll climb back onto that same bike and perform this test again. Same protocol. Same suffering. Different athlete.

At least that's the plan.

For now, I'm going to enjoy the satisfaction of having visited the shadow realm and returned with usable data.

FTP: 143 W.

Worth it.

Probably.

Ask me again tomorrow.