The Wattage Thread

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450. On strava.

Still miles away from the worlds best in that sense but very impressive.

But it was a freak day up there - feel a bit bad for AD as he'd has been in the ballpark bad he been up there.

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It was a weird day.

I would have hoped to nick a 17 had I done a good ride, but we'll never know as I cba with that drive, unless they do a national on it again.

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For simple - I would get strava premium, that allows you to monitor best efforts in a ride using the power curve and track against previous making monitoring improvements easy.

In terms of display, I would have 3 sec avg as my main power display, average power and normalised power (for total ride) I do use the lap button too as it's easy then to analyse it. But it's simple enough with strava to select a small portion of a ride to see what you did.

Definitely read the book and then it will begin to make more sense. Personally I would ride as you were for a few weeks to build up some data. FTP test won't hurt but not something I would worry about doing that often. Changes are easy to spot without the need for that.

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Yeh very normal.

Almost impossible to keep cool on the turbo if you're pushing proper watts. I remember doing an FTP test outside, in the snow, I was almost naked and was about to pass out near the end with heat exhaustion.

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Folk think they've found some more since last season?

Early days for myself but it looks like I might have found another 10W or so on the TT bike which is nice. Did my usual late Dec 10 mile TT to get an idea of where I'm at, managed about 405w up from 365w 3 years prior in the same event!

Going to get back on the core stuff soon as I found it really helped me get it all out on the drops on the roadbike, I reckon I should be able to do 420W for 20 mins on the roadbike, lost a bit of weight too, might go alright this season if I can keep it all together.

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Gruffy said:

That's a big leap. Does that mean you're expecting/hoping for bigger gains than other years because you've got a head start on the season? What are your plans and targets for the year?

I've started the year with my highest FTP to date (325W) which was a surprise after the final 4 months of 2016. I think it's the result of the TCR in August and planning my weeks and months around TSS since November, despite the volume having dropped. I'm hoping this is an ongoing trend and I'll keep finding 'easy-ish' gains simply from maintaining consistency and holding a steady ramp rate.

Hmm, its a a fairly normal gain, I've generally seemed to find 10-15w per winter since I started measuring power properly. I rode for a year with a fcked powermeter so actually very hard for me to pinpoint what I started on. I know that in April 2012 when I borrowed a powertap I did 360w for 20 mins, about 6 months in to cycling properly, I'd loved to have done that test 6 months prior, I reckon maybe 80W lower than that number! So about 50-60w gain over 4.5 years is about in line with what I said above I suppose.

Goals I jotted down in a blog post yesterday actually, I think you follow on twitter? Link is on profile of that

I think you'll keep getting gains, but good to keep it mixed up - James Hayden actually just joined our club, be interesting to see how he's going. FTP seems to be about 5 w/kg for him currently, about same as mine, but he's a fair bit lighter.

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Gruffy said:

360W is hell of a place to be at 6 months into cycling. Even 280W sounds incredible for a beginner. Did you come into cycling with fitness from another sport?

I'm around 4W/kg. I have winter timber to shed but I don't know if 5W/kg is achievable for me at 37 with all of life's other responsibilities. I'd like to climb better but I'm unlikely to be competing at high level anyway so it doesn't matter too much. As long as I'm getting the best out of what's possible I'll be content. I'm very tempted to give racing a go this year though.

I was pretty sporting in my childhood, tennis, hockey etc. But I came to cycling after about 4 years of doing nothing but eating/drinking/smoking and I still do smoke occasionally ! It helped me lose 20kg. Its puzzling though as I was ste at endurance stuff in school, but cycling endurance is good, think maybe just a bit heavy set for running.

Yeh, you should, there is something for everyone when racing, its why its fun, big, small, whatever as long as you are fit then there are races for you.

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Looks like I need to hit the yoga up again. Did 30 mins steady at about 345w this evening, was not really stressing me all that much but my back started to ache. I genuinely noticed a huge difference when I did it last year, and I think one of my main limiters on the bike is actually staying comfortable while putting the power down!

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I wouldn't read too much into the stages numbers for such efforts. They're dogst at the best of times, let alone when peak numbers come into it.

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The stages become hugely less accurate the harder the effort from what I've seen.

Riding around at normal watts my balance is good, when I really push hard my right leg is dominant, stages is only measuring one leg then doubling it, its not that useful for harder efforts IMO. Still can't fathom why anyone would buy one, but there we are.

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I've got quarqs too.

I've always had very solid numbers through these, both units.

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Read what I posted.

Assuming your leg balance is perfect at every integer, its fine. But most peoples are not, and that only becomes more noticeable with harder efforts.

Lets say you are 46% one side like Ross above, stages will be doubling that and assuming both legs are equal. That's 8% error. Which is about 30W at threshold for me and a huge number of watts at any shorter intervals.

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If I'm paying hundreds of pounds I want a device that is inline with other devices. Like it or not, people want to compare themselves to other people. For me its vital to really to have accurate numbers as working out the drag of a time trial position relative to your rivals (assuming you know they're on proper meters also) relies on that.

For £400 quid do I want something that is consistently wrong, or not? Easy answer for me.

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My point being, for the money, you might as well just get one that works inline with all the others...

I reckon I can swap a quarq as quick as stages, if I needed to.

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Sandersports said:

Never thought of Amazon ... Will keep a look out . ..... @Rob ... Do they run all ok with Ultegra & Dura-ace ?

Yep! Though I use KCNC rings on the front.

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I think one of mine might be a riken? God knows, they all do the same thing it would seem.

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Hmmm, they're the Blade series, BUT the new version I thought were ugly so I went with the old which seem to be quite rare. I think I got them from bike24 which is a german site?

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Generally its lower indoors than out (power production) because of lack of inertia, heat build up, and generally mental fatigue of it.

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The point isn't about traffic and stuff its about perceived exertion for a given power. If you had a road with no interruptions it would be very unusual for you to produce more power on the turbo really for all reasons listed.

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JPJPJP said:

Spotted this on Dean Downing's twitter feed, thought it might interest a few here



https://twitter.com/TrainSharpDean/status/89641061...

He's a strong lad is Langworthy.

Not that aero though, but he is about 6,6.

Though his headunit is doing something a bit weird as its 406W on Strava.

Edited by okgo on Wednesday 16th August 09:54