I can't disagree with anything that you have said in spirit. I'd say that the first one feels great. The second one gets a little uncomfortable toward the end. The third one takes concentrated effort to complete. The fourth one starts to hurt pretty bad in the middle. The fifth one hurts bad about 1 minute in. The last one is a total suffer fest and it takes real fortitude/mental derangement to finish it.

I know that the published studies say that this is the way to go for FTP enhancement and I have been doing them for over a month, but my personal experience is that they are great in boosting 5 minute power, but don't work as well for me as 2x20's in boosting FTP. Perhaps I am not typical in terms of the study population. Since all of the races I care about for the rest of the year are not hour long TT's I will continue this protocol, but next Spring I will go back to my tried and true 2x20's and 2+ hour tempo rides to get ready for a 40 km ITT.