Critical Power Test (1/03/07)

After a long holiday break that was preceeded by being sick for 2 weeks I decided it was about time to face the music and see how badly I had slipped.

Tuesday I did my 15 second and 1 minute power and yesterday I did my 5 minute and 20 minute power. The results were about what I expected.

My 15 second power was not that much worse that I had done in the past at 888w. My 1 minute power was low at 558w.

My 5 minute power has decreased by 10watts at 330w and my 20 minute power took a big hit, falling from 300w to 290w.

In using 20 minute power to calculate Critical Power (CP), or Functional Threshold Power (FTP) you have to account for the shortness of the interval and that means subtracting 5% of your value. This leaves my CP at 280watts, 20 watts lower that during the racing season.

Here is a comparision of my last few CP tests:

One thing that is obvious is the increase in my 5 minute and 20 minute power during the fall when I was training and racing.

But, in about a month I have lost quite a bit of threshold power. This is evidenced by the graphs below showing my CP values for December 13 (Left) and January 4th (Right).
















The good thing is that I can raise this back up as long as I begin again focusing on FTP efforts
over the next 4-6 months. If by May I can increase my FTP power again, I may be able to crack the 40km TT in under an hour. First I have to get to the point where I can stay at threshold for 60 minutes and that will take a little while. It will be ahrd without aero gear but I am hopeful.