Not a super attractive photograph today … that’s the sweat under my bike after my FTP test (Functional Threshold Power) this evening.

FTP tests are hard.  You basically go as hard as you possibly can, for 20 minutes straight on the bike.  You are trying to find out the maximum power you can hold for that time.  The higher the number, the stronger you are as a cyclist.

Tonight I failed ….  I couldn’t get through the 20 minute test and quit after about 14 minutes.  I’m am going to share my comments to my coach below.  They lay it all out there for you to see …  I think they give you some good insight into how things went (I did omit the actual power numbers; they aren’t important to the insight).

I am being totally open here, to hopefully help you realize that we all fail sometimes.  It’s OK to fail.  It’s an opportunity to learn and the most important thing to learn, is to not beat yourself up about it.  It is just one workout; just one day.

Here are my notes to my coach:

I couldn’t hack it … honest thoughts below.

Quads were sluggish and tired during the ten minute warm up. This put doubts in my mind that I could get through the session, right from the start.

I had a rough power number in my mind, that I thought I could hold for 20 minutes. I wanted to start around ‘x’ Watts and try to hold it for as long as possible. If all went well, I would try to push a little more power towards the end.

From the start I was not feeling great. I couldn’t find a gear on my road bike, that seemed to give me the right balance of cadence and power (tried to figure this out during the one minute sessions). Not sure if this was actually physically true, but mentally it was definitely a problem.

After 10 minutes, I was really struggling mentally (and my quads were screaming at me). I tried gear changes to re-set things, but that just seemed to make it worse. Quite honestly, I soon realized, I was never going to hold power anywhere close to what I expected (wanted), so I just shut it down.

I honestly think I am a stronger cyclist than this time last year…. just not tonight.