Thank you all for the replies.
I can see that my inexperience has caused annoyance to some of you, though I assure you that it was never my intention. Being completely alien to any structured endurance training I thought I would see more results from the cycling I did during the summer. To me, the 3000km effort seemed to be quite a lot. As several of you have already pointed out, it was probably not enough.
Summa summarum, I think I will continue riding on my trainer as much as I can throughout the winter and wait with the power analysis until later.
The most important thing is to stick with it, regardless of the program you choose. If you are less likely to go out in cold or wet weather then the turbo is the way to go for you. You also mentioned that you work irregular shift patterns and cannot commit to the schedule Trainerroad provides. This isn't a problem at all. Just follow the process as best you can with one golden rule - do a lighter session the day after a hard session, this will give your body time to recover and won't allow you to over do it, as you mentioned you may have consecutive days training due to work patterns. So in summary don't do 2 hard sessions back to back to begin with.
As for Trainerroad, well there are a few threads on here about it. One started
here which is quite useful. It really was a thread for those who were just starting to use Trainerroad. Should be of help.
Personally i have a structured training schedule which differs vastly throughout the year. So it's difficult to prescribe anything if you don't have any plans or goals as such, but that being said there is a generic approach for overall fitness. Ride as much as you can. There are a few on here that advocate long hours in the saddle but i would suggest, as you are time restricted, you try to up the intensity of your outdoor rides. In other words i'd suggest that 2 hours at 80-90% effort would be more beneficial than a 5 hour ride which you pootle along without purpose. If you have time though you can always add a long ride every few weeks.
You can increase your fitness massively with one hour sessions. The key is intensity. It really is something that could be talked about for hours though and fill a yellow pages with words on the matter so i suggest you follow a basic plan on TR, something like "build" or "base" low volume. This should be around 4 workouts a week but don't worry if some weeks you do less, same applies if you do one more. The idea is just to get through the plan and measure improvement. Test again with the 2 x 8 minute FTP session, once the schedule has ended - usually 8 -12 weeks. After this test start using the 20 minute (60 total) FTP test.
See how you get on in the next 3 or 4 weeks and report back. Most of the people on here are trying to help but they do answer these types of questions often. For that reason sometimes the answers appear quick and blunt but i know it's not intended.
One last thing, as for your apparently low FTP. It's not overly low for someone who has not really trained with intensity. It will grow fast when you realise just how much you can give in these hour sessions. Give it a bit of time and you WILL see results.
