The Wattage Thread

[anonymous-user]

One piece of advice. Don't get too caught up with short tests. Longer (3hr) rides at a low stress with the odd effort will pay you back.

[Dizeee]

Interesting angle - and I have found, starting off slowly (ish for me) pays dividends later on.

[ChrisMCoupe]

Dizeee unless I've missed it in your post (blame the beers if so), what are your 20min and 1hour power figures? I have access to a wattbike at my work gym but only really concentrate on 1, 5, 20 and 1 hour power figures.

[fromage]

So is this a all out 6 minute test then?

[Dizeee]

Yes it was a 6 minute test. Spent 45 minutes in total on the bike as last time, warming up, raising the power up and down to get the heart rate up and legs going, ending in a 6 min test set at 360 Watts. I did it at 320 last time but he said that was too low.

[okgo]

So its basically a ramp test?

I don't understand what it is you are doing?

[Birdthom]

I couldn't tell what's going on there either, but if your weight is going down and your power is going up then that can only be good :-)

[okgo]

Who is your coach anyway? And who else does he coach? I probably know some of the, given you're not far from here...

[Dizeee]

okgo said:

So its basically a ramp test?

I don't understand what it is you are doing?

TBH neither do I.

AFAIK it's a measurement of how I am improving.

Obviously, I am not having a full VO2 mask to the face test, just a measure of what I can do, and what to improve on.

It's not a ramp test as such, just that I ramped up at the end. I think it is just a measure of power, i.e what I can sustain, over that 6 mins. The idea is, 6 minutes at "as much as you can give". Match that with the HR plus Watts, and you have the results.

[RGambo]

Might be a bit of a daft question, but here goes.
A couple of years ago I got into reasonable shape ( well for a 39 yo ) I'd've always been built well, and I got myself down to 90kgs. For reasons I won't bore you with, it all went to pot! By Christmas 2013 I was 105kgs and not very fit. So january I resolved to 'get back on the bike' so far I've made it to 93kgs and my Last FTP test was 5% down on my Pb.
So the question is this, I'm aiming for 85kgs, but I don't want to loose any power, increase if possible. So are there any tips on what to do, what not to do when loosing the kg's so I don't loose power with weight.

[Grandfondo]

RGambo said:

Might be a bit of a daft question, but here goes.
A couple of years ago I got into reasonable shape ( well for a 39 yo ) I'd've always been built well, and I got myself down to 90kgs. For reasons I won't bore you with, it all went to pot! By Christmas 2013 I was 105kgs and not very fit. So january I resolved to 'get back on the bike' so far I've made it to 93kgs and my Last FTP test was 5% down on my Pb.
So the question is this, I'm aiming for 85kgs, but I don't want to loose any power, increase if possible. So are there any tips on what to do, what not to do when loosing the kg's so I don't loose power with weight.

Eat clean calories but don't eat to little if you are doing plenty miles!
Use something like myfitness app to log calories and exercise to see what you should be consuming to lose fat not muscle.
Okgo will be along shortly to rubbish this but it works for mere mortals!

[RGambo]

Grandfondo said:

Eat clean calories but don't eat to little if you are doing plenty miles!
Use something like myfitness app to log calories and exercise to see what you should be consuming to lose fat not muscle.
Okgo will be along shortly to rubbish this but it works for mere mortals!

Thanks for that, I am using my fitness pal. And to be honest I'm surprised how easy the first 9kgs has gone. You hit the nail on the head I think with clean calories, processed foods and beer were my enemy. I'm guessing the last few kg's will be the hardest.

[Magic919]

If you can drop your weight by 20% and in the course of it lose 10% of your power figure, you'll still be quids in.

[fromage]

Dizeee said:

TBH neither do I.

AFAIK it's a measurement of how I am improving.

Obviously, I am not having a full VO2 mask to the face test, just a measure of what I can do, and what to improve on.

It's not a ramp test as such, just that I ramped up at the end. I think it is just a measure of power, i.e what I can sustain, over that 6 mins. The idea is, 6 minutes at "as much as you can give". Match that with the HR plus Watts, and you have the results.

Yeah its a strange duration to measure improvements over unless your planning on dropping 15kg and start doing hill climbs. I would perhaps ask him to do some threshold testing.

[Birdthom]

Magic919 said:

If you can drop your weight by 20% and in the course of it lose 10% of your power figure, you'll still be quids in.

Depends on the type of riding though

[RGambo]

I've entered the alpine challenge in September. I know not really built for zipping up alps, but looks a good event in a fantastic area.
So weight is the enemy, but I'm never going to be what you'd call light, so got to keep the power up as much as possible.
I'm being realistic and 85kgs is going to be my target weight. My current 20 min test power is 325w. I'd like to get to 4w/kg for 20 min so that means 340w, which I have achieved before, but not at that weight.
It's fair to say that I have a bit of fat to loose , but ensuring that goes not the leg power is key!
Final stupid question is, given I climb at about 80-85 cadence, I assume I should be targeting most of my tempo and threshold sessions at that cadence.

[Grandfondo]

RGambo said:

I've entered the alpine challenge in September. I know not really built for zipping up alps, but looks a good event in a fantastic area.
So weight is the enemy, but I'm never going to be what you'd call light, so got to keep the power up as much as possible.
I'm being realistic and 85kgs is going to be my target weight. My current 20 min test power is 325w. I'd like to get to 4w/kg for 20 min so that means 340w, which I have achieved before, but not at that weight.
It's fair to say that I have a bit of fat to loose , but ensuring that goes not the leg power is key!
Final stupid question is, given I climb at about 80-85 cadence, I assume I should be targeting most of my tempo and threshold sessions at that cadence.

Myfittnesspal is your friend,you could easily lose a kilo a week while retaining power which will increase power to weight ratio for the climbs.
Weight loss will help you no end in the Alps.

[okgo]

Agree. At your size losing power won't be an issue. When you get to the limits it may be an issue but I still haven't heard of many people who have lost power from losing weight. I have lost a lot of weight and have not seen an issue.

[RGambo]

okgo said:

Agree. At your size losing power won't be an issue. When you get to the limits it may be an issue but I still haven't heard of many people who have lost power from losing weight. I have lost a lot of weight and have not seen an issue.

Cheers, thanks all from replys.

[fromage]

A quick question about power zones, do people generally manually set their power zones depending on what they can hold for any duration when fresh? or do you just stick your FTP in and let all the other zones be automatically calculated around it ?

The reason I ask I was looking at my zones calculated from my FTP and zones 5, 6 and 7 seem the wrong % of FTP for my power profile.