One of the things I really like about Zwift is the little coloured power graph that shows your effort at the bottom of the screen. The only trouble is it works off your last recorded FTP and if like me you haven’t done nearly enough riding lately to maintain your previously fantastic levels of fitness, it can be quite hard to keep that power graph ticking along in the green/yellow band that tells you your making a proper effort.

Now my FTP last year peaked at a heady 210watts – clearly I was nowhere near that now.

It is however in our nature never to admit to a retrograde step so I manfully continued to keep trying to hit my previous targets with only sporadic riding and no structured training.

It all came to a head this weekend. As per usual I had to snatch a quick hour on the bike when my youngest son had been dragged off the Xbox (which is set up in the same room as the turbo) to do his homework, knowing I only had the hour it would take for him to smash out his science test before he’d be clamouring to get straight back to Fortnite. (I could write about my parenting failures but that would need a separate blog)

Anyway, logging onto Zwift and it’s an Innsbruck day, fab – my favourite Zwift course by far. My best time round the Innsbruck Worlds course short lap is just over 55 minutes so it’s a good hours focused workout. Not on Saturday. I crawled round the course in 1 hour 7 minutes ish and I was giving it all my legs had to give. I know my previous best was set using my old wheel on trainer, and using my new super dupper Cyclops is different, but this wasn’t a trainer calibration issue. This was just not having the legs – pure and simple. Even with my heart rate bouncing off it’s absolute max I couldn’t get my power figures anywhere near my supposed FTP no matter how much sweat dribbled onto my top tube. It was clearly time for a bit of a rethink.

Having surrendered the back room once again to the online gaming terror of cyberspace I retreated upstairs to lie ignominiously on my bed in a sweat encrusted heap while I contemplated the apt title of this blog. To take my mind of my woes and the intermittent cramping of my left quadricep I fired up my phone to watch some inspirational cycling content on YouTube.

Now one of my favourite YouTube cycling channels is Juliet Elliott’s . This girl is cycling moral in a seven – ten minute sized bottle. Relentlessly cheery, almost always upbeat and helpfully a great multi-discipline cyclist her YouTube blogs about everything from fixed gear crit racing to multi day bike packing never fail to lift the mood. And helpfully for me (but maybe less fun for her) was it seems like me she’s suffered a bit of a slump in riding form lately due to a busy life and some bouts of disruptive to the training illness. Unlike me she’s also having to train around an uber active toddler but even though those days are a hazy memory for me I can still sympathise…..( wait till she’s a teenager Juliet 😱)

So having watched poor Juliet suffer through an indoor ramp test session to reassess her FTP I started to think that would be an equally beneficial goal reset for me. It was clearly pointless continuing to turn myself inside out trying to hit power figures I was no longer capable of so the next day I swung the leg over the bike and embarked on the Zwift version of the ramp test.

The premise is simple – after a quick warm up the trainer resistance ramps up every minute to give you an ever increasing power target till you reach one you can’t hold for a minute, then using some secret formula it calculates your FTP. It’s a much quicker test than the usual 20 minute FTP effort and sent require you to make judgements about how to pace it which is a real bonus.

So how did I do? We’ll just like Juliet I was a little disappointed but unsurprised to see that my FTP score was down a fair bit – 188watts to be exact. Not the end of the world and as the title of this blog does suggest I am of course in decline!

So I’m off to lick my wounds and think about how to get those lost watts back. Hell, I might even try some proper training for once!

For anyone who hasn’t discovered Juliet Elliott’s YouTube channel and wants to see somebody suffer through a ramp test the links below :

https://youtu.be/A399zKEQ1ss