Tracking your best average power output over various durations is the key to understanding what you are physically capable of doing. A chart of these personal records is called your Critical Power (CP) curve. TrainingPeaks Virtual uses proprietary data modeling to understand your physiology and can act as a virtual coach to suggest where you need to focus on to improve your performance.
Your CP curve is also used in Performance Verification. To assist with verifying your performances, it is therefore helpful to ensure that your CP curve truly reflects your abilities. TrainingPeaks Virtual will automatically detect this for you over time, but if you want to speed up the process you can complete some of the in-game workouts which specifically target measuring your Critical Power. For example:
- Workout “CP3 Test” – helps determine your Critical Power over 3 minutes.
- Workout “CP5 Test” – helps determine your Critical Power over 5 minutes.
- Workout “CP10 Test” – helps determine your Critical Power over 10 minutes.
- Workout “FTP Test” – helps determine your Critical Power over 20 minutes (and your FTP).
These can, and should, be performed separately with plenty of rest in between. TrainingPeaks Virtual will update your CP Curve automatically after each ride based on the data from that ride (as it will for all rides you do in the game).
Note that CP is separate from your user-entered FTP. Your FTP can be manually changed whenever you want and is only used to adjust the difficulty of workouts, and at what power levels to display different colors for your training zones. Your FTP is not used in performance verification and is not shared with other users, so changing it to some other value than your actual FTP offers you no advantage.