Last Friday I retested my FTP. As expected it was a fair bit lower than previously. Lots of reasons, time off the bike, injury, illness, testing at the end of a full day and not having eaten well, so no surprise there but I was a bit surprised that it was a whole 10% down.
Anyway I'm following the TacX "groundwork" plan, which is really quite dull. During the week (this is my lockdown commute) there are "intensive" sessions (actually not very intensive) which involve 3 or 4 blocks of 8 min or so at 75% FTP or so (they vary session to session). They really don't grab my attention. At the weekend they prescribe endurance sessions of things like 90 min at a constant 65%. There's no way I'm doing something that boring so my weekend long rides are being done on the Real Life Video and are longer and harder and more varied than the prescribed sessions (and are fun, which is the whole point).
Anyway my new lower FTP made this morning's "intensive" session even less challenging. I never got out of zone 3 HR. I wonder if it's meant to be like that. I think I'll bump my FTP up a little in my profile to make it more interesting.
I find I like to have constant changes and challenges within a workout to combat boredom. My favourite workout so far is an over/under one that has three blocks each containing 3x1 min at 120% with 2 min at 75% in between, and a few min recovery at 50% between blocks.
I don't know whether I'm going to stick with this "groundwork" plan. Given that I don't have any particular target in mind other than not turning into a potato I may as well just choose workouts that I like doing.
