The Wattage Thread

[nacnac]

Thanks Rob, I rather hoped you would reply and with an example too. Very useful. Out of interest at that time what would have been your best 20 min power? Around 390 Watts?

[okgo]

nacnac said:

Thanks Rob, I rather hoped you would reply and with an example too. Very useful. Out of interest at that time what would have been your best 20 min power? Around 390 Watts?

Thing is, unless you go off solo near the end of a race its quite hard to see what sort of effort you used in a small break as you're always swapping turns, but looking at the time we were trying hard in the early stages of the 2nd break it was around 330w average for a fair time which NP wise probably wasn't far from FTP, so kind of backs up that you should always be fairly close unless you've totally drilled yourself or have been riding for a silly amount of time previous.

I would have said 390-410 range as a full tilt attempt yeh, obviously some days you do go better than others etc.

[Ponk]

Anyone here use Golden Cheetah? I'm trying to figure out how on earth you set W'. On the chain gang tonight I hit 140% W' expended which suggests CP is set low. I might have to make the jump to WKO, Golden Cheetah is seriously not user friendly!

[okgo]

Ponk said:

Anyone here use Golden Cheetah? I'm trying to figure out how on earth you set W'. On the chain gang tonight I hit 140% W' expended which suggests CP is set low. I might have to make the jump to WKO, Golden Cheetah is seriously not user friendly!

I have used it in the past but can't seem to remember that, maybe they have updated it. There is a BC code for training peaks discount btw, can get you up to 40% off.

[okgo]

So I have done a few 10 mile TT's so far and noticed that power has been around 10w up on last year, I was keen to see if that translated to 25 mile TT's - still pacing negative splits I did indeed manage to ad just under 10w to my best 25 mile power yesterday at 362W for 49 mins or so. I reckon the gap to my road-bike is getting smaller, I've got my FTP on road bike set to 380W at the minute, and while its rare to every actually ride at full gas for that long in a road race every points to that being about right.

Interestingly along with being a bit more powerful this year, I did an aero session in Newport velodrome this last week and I think we may have found a few watts there too by changing my position slightly, it all culminated in me doing a time 2.5 mins quicker than I did on the same event 1 year prior. I'm hoping that its a fairly big jump forward, I've not ruled out winning a national medal in a time trial in the next few years, it would be amazing to do it but I think a bit more work is needed.

[Ponk]

Those are some impressive stats.

I recce'd a 10 course (E7/10b) on my way home from work and used it as a threshold test. Averaged 283 for the 10 miles and 296 over the last 20 minutes. That's 22 watts up on my previous 20 minute best! Chuffed with that. I haven't done a threshold test for a while so I was expecting an improvement but not by that much.

I've set myself the goal of a 300 watt 10 which I think looks doable later in the season.

https://www.strava.com/activities/326198055

[okgo]

Good work!

Amusingly I remember probably around 3 years ago I did an FTP test and after 20 mins I felt like I was going to die, it was about 10w lower than what I did on the TT bike crunched up like a circus act!

Takes time to progress after the initial spurts I think!

[Ponk]

okgo said:

Good work!

Amusingly I remember probably around 3 years ago I did an FTP test and after 20 mins I felt like I was going to die, it was about 10w lower than what I did on the TT bike crunched up like a circus act!

Takes time to progress after the initial spurts I think!

Sounds like my first FTP attempt on the turbo. I aimed about 20 watts up on previous and was practically in tears by the half. I'd forgotten that my power is lower on the turbo so in reality I was aiming 40 watts up! Needless to say it was a wasted effort.

My only TT efforts have been on the road bike as a means to test power. I am finding all this suffering strangely appealing though.....

[Ponk]

Figured I'd put this here as it's probably got the best concentration of racers and strongmen.

Agonising back pain on short sharp crit circuits, so much so that power plummets. Just reading Rob's palace report and it reminded me (I'm not a stalker I promise). Any suggestions for strengthening my back?

[okgo]

Yeh its a strange one, its not agonizing for me, it just makes it a bit of a struggle to put the power out in the saddle (doesn't really effect out of the saddle), I'm going to try moving my shifters up the bar a bit and rotating the bars round so when in the drops the reach is a bit less, and I'm going to start more core stuff again which I think did help when I last did some.

But its possible that hamstrings being tight is a contributor to the issue...

[nammynake]

Thought I'd post here rather than starting a new thread. Looking for some pointers for training for road racing (crits and road races). I've built up a good base over the past few years (just over 4000 this year) but have largely focussed on endurance events (recently completed a 7-day race over the Alps). I'd like to put the long endurance stuff aside for now and focus on racing. I've only raced once (back in March) - this was a 30 minute closed circuit race - I got dropped on the last lap when I slipped to the back in the last hairpin, but learned a lot about positioning and felt pretty strong throughout.

I'm fairly light (63kg) so the flat circuit races probably won't suit me that well, in which case I'll probably focus on road races with a bit of climbing.

Does anyone have any training plans they could share? My training this year has been mostly long hilly rides, together with some chaingangs. I'll stick with the chaingangs but are there any other useful sessions I should be looking at? I can probably do 7-10 hours per week.

[nammynake]

Shameless bump...can anyone help?

[okgo]

Its difficult to say as we don't know what your weakness is?

We could assume that it may be absolute punch to stay with it when it gets tasty near the end, which would be expected of a 60kg bloke.

Perhaps you could share your power profile and then maybe it might be obvious where you should concentrate your efforts/types of circuit that would help you out...

[Ponk]

I wouldn't write off flat races. I have a friend that is a similar weight to you and he has a hell of a kick. It's all in the training, well up to a point anyway.

From the description of your riding it sounds like you're missing out on the short burst power. I've found exactly the same to be honest so I'm starting to work on 20/40s and some big gear stuff.

[nammynake]

Thanks for the reply. Power profile below from indoor trainer (Kickr):

[anonymous-user]

nammynake said:

Thanks for the reply. Power profile below from indoor trainer (Kickr):

For crits it's more about going at the right time. If you have a good level of endurance you may find you can get away. Waiting until the last lap isn't for everyone. I've always had a half decent sprint so i generally just sit in. Have you tried Hog Hill or something similar, that may suit you better than a flat circuit? Either way train for z5 efforts, routines like revolver work well. Best advice ride to your skills

[okgo]

You not got anything from outside? I've never done over 1000w on the turbo...

[nammynake]

okgo said:

You not got anything from outside? I've never done over 1000w on the turbo...

I don't have a power meter on my bike, just on my turbo. I live in Yorkshire so Hog Hill is a bit far. Thanks for the tip regarding Z5 stuff, I'll incorporate that into my training and see how I get on. Endurance is definitely my strength although this could a direct response to my training rather than my natural strength. Although not necessarily comparable I have good endurance at running but also have a reasonable pace over 100-800m.

[nammynake]

Picked up a Stages power meter this week. First ride today so just getting used to the data. Could someone confirm if the following settings on my Garmin 500 are correct? By 'correct' I mean to provide sensible and not inflated power averages:

- 1 second recording
- Autopause OFF
- Include zeros in averaging

I've read that Normalised Power (NP) is a good metric for average power during a ride. I can display this on my Garmin but don't see it when I upload to Strava. Strava only shows the 'Weighted Average', which I'm guessing is different? Are the two comparable, and if not, is weighted-average a decent enough stat for comparing rides?

Ride from today shows 239W weighted-average over 43 miles. This was 1h:56m moving time, and 2h elapsed time. Does the weighted average include the 4 mins non-moving time (I switched off auto-pause).

https://www.strava.com/activities/353622839/analys...


Thanks

[murray]

I've got same settings on my garmin although I normally have auto pause on. Weighed average is the Strava equivalent of NP but the figure on Strava tends to be a lot lower than NP on garmin connect and Training Peaks which are identical.