Last Saturday I was scheduled to do an FTP test (Functional Threshold Power).
It’s 20 minutes on a stationary bike cycling as hard as you possibly can until you’re nearly sick.
You’re not supposed to leave anything there, you’re supposed to empty yourself and you should be rested before you do it.
The purpose is to see how far you can go so it can inform your training for six weeks so that you can push yourself to better levels and higher limits.
You warm up for 20 minutes and then have a rest for a few minutes and have a drink and then go for 20 minutes.
For me there is a playlist of 5 songs which takes me to the end.
On Saturday I stopped at 10 minutes and climbed off the bike.
That is a 'failed FTP’.
The truth is I couldn’t hurt myself on Saturday because I've hurt myself in too many other places over the past three months but I couldn’t hurt myself on a bike.
Some people seek out the pain on a bike to ease the pain elsewhere but not me.
And so I should be depressed and upset and devastated that I couldn’t finish an FTP (for the first time in about 4 years) but the truth is it just sets the bar at that level and so the next time I sit on the bike to do an FTP all I have to do is finish.
Michael Jordan was a brilliant example of someone who would talk about failure often and about linking his failures to his successes.
The next time I hit a 300 Watt FTP (the highest I’ve ever done in 2017) it will probably be because I didn’t finish last Saturday.
Blog Post Number - 2398
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