What 76 Hours Of Structured Training Did To My FTP

Three months ago I got back on the bike after spending close to years away from structured cycling.

Like many riders returning to the sport, I wasn’t chasing podiums, KOMs or unrealistic goals. I simply wanted to become fitter, healthier and stronger than I was the day before.

At the time, my FTP sat at approximately 154 watts - Zwift test quickly showed me how bad my FTP was, there was nothing special about that number. In fact, many cyclists would consider it quite low. But every journey starts somewhere and having a baseline gave me something to work from.

Fast forward three months and things look very different.

Since March, I have ridden 1,538 kilometres, climbed 11,635 metres and spent a total of 76 hours and 17 minutes on the bike across 111 activities. That might sound like a lot at first glance, but when spread across three months it becomes far more achievable than most people realise. There were work trips, missed sessions, recovery days and weeks where life simply got in the way.

What mattered wasn’t perfection, what mattered was consistency.

The First Signs That Things Were Working

A few weeks into training I started noticing something interesting, rides that previously felt difficult were becoming manageable. My cadence was improving, I was spending less time fighting the bike and more time riding it, and the numbers were beginning to move in the right direction.

One particular ride stood out.

When I first completed it, my average power sat at 119 watts. Two weeks later I repeated the same effort and averaged 185 watts.

That wasn’t a five or ten watt improvement, that was a sixty six watt increase.

My weighted power increased from 149 watts to 192 watts and my average cadence rose from 83 rpm to 90 rpm.

• The duration remained virtually identical.

• The bike hadn’t changed.

• The equipment hadn’t changed.

• The rider had.

Looking back now, that was the first real indication that the training was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

The Mountain Doesn’t Lie

If there is one place where fitness cannot hide, it is Alpe du Zwift.

The climb is long enough that pacing matters, hard enough that fitness matters and simple enough that excuses don’t matter, my first attempt took 1 hour, 36 minutes and 9 seconds.

A short time later I returned to tackle it again, this time I reached the top in 1 hour, 30 minutes and 38 seconds, over five and a half minutes faster.

My average power increased from 152 watts to 167 watts and my climbing speed improved from 10.8 kilometres per hour to 11.4 kilometres per hour.

What made this result satisfying wasn’t simply the time saved, it was proof that the improvements weren’t isolated to a single workout or one good day. The fitness was becoming repeatable.

The foundation was being built.

Putting It To The Test

The real test came this week during an FTP assessment with Peter Trench from Trench Health and Fitness.

Unlike a casual ride, an FTP test strips everything back. There are no drafting opportunities, no freewheeling sections and nowhere to hide. It is simply you, the pedals and the truth, for twenty minutes I rode as hard as I could sustain.

The result was an average power of 212 watts and a calculated FTP of 202 watts.

That means in roughly three months I had increased my FTP from approximately 154 watts to 202 watts.

A gain of 48 watts.

Put another way, my threshold power improved by more than 31%, that is a significant increase in a relatively short period of time.

What made the result even more interesting was how hard the effort actually was. During the test I spent almost the entire twenty minutes operating at the upper limits of my cardiovascular system.

My average heart rate sat at 189 bpm and peaked at 196 bpm. More than half the test was spent in VO2 max territory, while the remainder sat largely within anaerobic capacity zones.

The numbers confirmed what my legs already knew, I was fitter than I had been three months earlier.

What Actually Created The Improvement

The easiest mistake to make when looking at results like these is to assume there must be a secret, there isn’t.

• 
  

• There was no miracle workout.

• No revolutionary training method.

• No magic piece of equipment.

The improvement came from doing simple things consistently.

• Riding easy when the plan called for easy.

• Riding hard when the plan called for hard.

• Taking recovery seriously.

• Fueling properly.

• Sleeping properly.

• Allowing the body time to adapt.

The reality is that most cyclists sabotage their progress by turning every ride into a race. They ride too hard on easy days and arrive tired when the important sessions come around, over the last three months I learned that fitness is not built by constantly pushing harder.

Fitness is built by applying the right stress and then allowing your body to adapt.

Final Thoughts

The number that stands out most:

• Isn’t 202 watts.

• It isn’t the five minute improvement on Alpe du Zwift.

• It isn’t even the 48 watt increase in FTP.

The number that stands out most is 76, Seventy six hours, that’s all.

Seventy six hours of riding spread across three months produced every result in this article, When you break it down like that, progress suddenly feels far more achievable.

• You don’t need to be a professional cyclist.

• You don’t need twenty hour training weeks.

• You don’t need perfect conditions.

You simply need to start where you are, remain consistent and trust the process.

1. Three months ago I was rebuilding.

2. Today I am stronger than I was then.

And the exciting part is knowing there is still plenty more to come.