His friend Bernard's FTP may be questionable but so is the concept itself, says the Doc. Mind you, his is still bigger than yours...
I was out for a ride with my friend Bernard recently, when he suddenly said, “What’s your FTP, Michael?”
Only four words, yet fully two reasons to be suspicious. He only uses my name when he’s plotting something, and he’d only conceivably ask about my FTP for exactly the same reason.
I’m assuming you k now what FTP is – functional threshold power. Power as in ‘watts’, threshold as in ‘the limit of what you can sustain for an hour or so’, functional as in ‘we’re to at least some extent guessing here rather than actually measuring in a lab, but at least it’s cheap’.
“It’s about 5.3 watts-per-k ilo,” I said. I gave him the power-to-weight ratio, because he likes to think I weigh 10kg more than I really do, and this way if he wants to keep believing that he’s also going to have to give me the extra 53 watts on the absolute number. He can reckon me fat or he can reckon me weak, but he can’t reckon me both. “Humph. As if FTP matters,” he replied. “So what ’s yours?” I asked.
“It’s 6.5 watts-per-kilo,” he said.
“No, Bernie, it’s not.”
“ Prove it isn’t.”
I could have proved it there and then by just riding at my own FTP and showing him all the fresh air there would be bet ween us after a minute or two, never mind an hour. But it wouldn’t help because he’d tell me it was winter and he never rides hard in winter. And also, from my perspective it would be a tiring way to make a point.
“I’ve done an FTP test,” he continued. I asked him what protocol he’d used, and if it was the standard 95% of his allout 20 minute maximum power?
“ Yes,” he said. “Except I just did a three-minute all-out test, because I realised after I’d done three minutes that it was going to be easy enough to keep that going for another 17. And then I took 98% of that, because I’m more experienced than most so the extra 3% should be easy.”
“And your body weight?”
“I estimated my lean body weight and used that, obviously. Not that any of it matters, because it’s not real cycling.”
He is right, to some extent. As a concept FTP has its uses for tracking your own fitness, assuming you don’t mind a 20-minute flat-out effort on the turbo every few weeks. (A nd if you have any sense at all,
