Pick the test you actually did — 30 minutes, 20 minutes, or 2 × 8 — and get your FTP, your LTHR and the seven zones for each.
Each sport uses a different test and a different metric. Pick one and we'll walk you through it.
More than one test is valid and they all get you to the same place. Pick the one you did — the maths changes depending on which.
If you have more than one metric, trust them in this order: power > pace > heart rate. HR lags behind the effort and drifts with heat, sleep and caffeine — it's the backup, not the main signal.
Having the numbers is half of it. The other half is knowing which session grows each zone — how to build a Z2 that's more than easy miles, the marathon-pace session that justifies Zone X, and what a real threshold set looks like. We'll email you the full guide.
The full PDF guide: the sessions for every zone, for swimming, cycling and running. One email, nothing else, and you can unsubscribe whenever you want.
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The same ones I use with my athletes, built on this zone structure.
Running plans are organised by race distance rather than by zone — pick your distance in the running plans, and the zones you just calculated are already built into them.
All three are valid and all three get you to the same place. The practical difference is what each one gives back:
30 minutes all-out. The most complete, and the one I recommend. It gives you FTP and LTHR from a single ride: average power for the 30 minutes is your FTP, and average heart rate for the last 20 is your LTHR. It's also the hardest to pace.
20 minutes all-out. Shorter and more repeatable. FTP comes from 95% of average power, because a 20-minute effort is held above true threshold. LTHR comes from average heart rate over the last 15 minutes.
2 × 8 minutes. Two maximal blocks with recovery between. FTP is 90% of the average of both. This test does not give you heart-rate zones: the blocks are too short for heart rate to settle where it needs to be. If you want HR zones, you need a continuous 20 or 30 minute effort.
If you have both, power leads. Heart rate lags behind the effort and moves with heat, sleep, caffeine and the stress of the day — two identical sessions can produce different heart rates with nothing at all having changed in your fitness. Power measures the work you're doing, directly.
That doesn't make HR useless: it's the best backup there is when you don't have a meter, and comparing the two across a block tells you things neither one says alone.
Rested, fed, chest strap on — a wrist sensor won't do for this. On the trainer, or on a stretch of road with no traffic lights, no long descents and no traffic forcing you to soft-pedal. Warm up seriously: 15 or 20 minutes with a couple of short accelerations before the block starts.
Go out even. The most common mistake is starting at the power you'd like to have and dragging yourself through the last eight minutes: the average comes out similar, but the test stops describing your threshold and starts describing your capacity to suffer badly distributed.