Like Spelger, I recently got a smart trainer that measures power, but I don't have a power meter on any of my bikes (yet). I've been reading a lot trying to get up to speed, literally and figuratively.

• This paper by Andrew Coggan is the precursor to his book and covers similar territory.
• This page lists some of the formulas for normalized power, intensity factor, etc, which may help you get a better handle on what they mean (the blog it's from seems to be mothballed, but has more useful information on structured training).

I remember downloading Golden Cheetah about 4 years ago and being so confused by what I was seeing that I quit it and forgot about it for 4 years. I only understand about half of what is in there now. I think part of my confusion is that it's trying to represent different physiological models (Coggan, Skiba, etc) that sometimes use different names for similar concepts (like FTP and CP). Most of my studying has been focused on Coggan's model, so when I see TRIMP, I'm thinking "what the hell is TRIMP?". And in some cases, GC has renamed existing concepts because they're trademarked (!).

I'll echo the advice to be kind of conservative with the FTP test. One of the first things I did when I got my smart trainer was attempt a 20-minute test at an optimistic wattage. I burned out in 4 minutes. Recovered for a bit, lowered the wattage 20 W, and tried again. Made it 6 minutes. Oof. That was sobering. Waited a few more days and tried it again at a lower wattage still, and made it through. I've seen some webpages on how to get the highest results in your FTP test, but this seems wrong-headed. FTP is a training tool, not just something to brag about (especially if your FTP is like mine). The goal should be to get a realistic result, not the highest result.