Most painful 20 minutes on a bike

First of all, sorry for my minimal contribution to the blog the last weeks. While increasing my training hours, I was also moving to a new house and trying to run a company with end-of-year deadlines. Basically, just a lot of excuses. I admire how Ingmar still finds the time to write these blogs! Let me do the promise to improve this for the next 70 days in 2026, our final sprint to the start of Cape Epic!

The second part 2025 has been 6 months where i squeezed every minute out of. Facing the same issues regarding work-life balance Ingmar has written about before. Balancing between working, training on the bike, training in the gym, coaching my sons basketball team and spending time with the family. Although that's a though balancing act, I enjoyed it. Having a goal makes it so much easier is one thing, but I just enjoy doing all of the above.

So after some weeks of training, Join prescribed me a FTP test again, to see where im at. Check the progress and set the accuracy level of the Join score. I'm in Spain so I needed to find a long stretch of road where I can push without interruptions. I wanted to simulate my last test, to make it more comparable. But to find a flat piece of road for that distance is a bit harder here in Girona. So I went with a long, slightly uphill, road with no traffic lights. They day before I already started with excuses to Ingmar with every excuse I could find why I would not improve (check indekken.nl). Bottom line, I did not feel I could ride more that 326 watts for an hour (FTP definition).

I really hate doing this. I think im pretty good in pushing myself far over the limit. So you just know you are going to suffer really bad for 20 minutes and that anticipation is terrible imo. So I did it in the morning to get it over with. Doing the warming up and then off we go! The last time i did it, I knew I improved and did not have a specific goal, so I did it based on a feeling. And that turned out the very good way to do it. This time, I was thinking, I need to aim for 350 watts for 20 minutes to improve my FTP (95% of 20 minute effort). So I started at 360/370 in the first minutes (just to be sure) , which I regretted the rest of the test. I wasn't able to hold it, power went down and the pain went up. Sticking to 300 wasn't even possible at some point. Bailing out went through my mind several times, but somehow I manged it. First seconds after I felled really sick and pretty disappointed at my poor build-up. But very happy it was over.

My disappointment changed into optimism very quickly, because after a minute my heart rate was already down to 100 again while still paddling. Meaning I was recovering very fast from the effort I did, that I could easily return to a normal endurance ride keeping the my zone 2 power. I extended the ride from 50 minutes to more than 2 hours and I felt great all the way to the end.

So although it was painful to see that my FTP in Join move back from 226 to 219 watts, I am 100% sure that the training has been very effective. What a 4 hours training feels like now, used to be a 2 hour training when I started. What join calls "Fatigue resistance" has significantly improved. And to be honest, for the Cape Epic that is all that counts. It's an endurance race, that will have some peak power moments, but it's mainly about pacing yourself.

With 70 days of training ahead with lots of big training weeks, I think there is still room for improvement on the endurance level. This does not really decline with age is what I have been told.

• FTP 310 -> 319
• Weight 78 -> 79
• Join score 40 -> 31

So getting there! Until then, keep chasing!