McNulty wrote:
"one Mabra racer could apparently do 5.8-6.2 w/kg at ~70 kg, albeit this is for a 20-min effort in an hour long race. One would think that if he were to do even 90% of 6.2 w/kg for FTP, he would be on a real pro team, rather than on a really strong regional amateur team."
Oh, I think I may know who that kid is. I think there may be some serious stage mother stuff going on with that him. Nice kid, btw but not pro.
It's issues like this that give Zwift a massive credibility issue. It's not there aren't people among us who genuinely can do 6 w/kg for 20 minutes, it's that we know who they are, given that they invariably rise to the top. There's a Canuck here on slowtwitch who could do just that (Jordan Cheyenne), and he's a known quantity in the North American racing scene due to his exploits.
Like I mentioned last week, save for one person, the ladies who are supposedly better than Chloe Dygert had squat-all to show for when they actually raced in Europe. Granted, IRL racing, especially European classics, places much higher demand on handling ability and tactical nous, but their supposedly superior w/kg should at least compensate for a bit of that (as was the case of Evelyn Stevens), and yet, almost all on Tibco went missing...
And back on the topic of Mabra racers, there are two with quite mediocre IRL racing history who nevertheless could somehow supposedly do at least 4.8 w/kg for 20 minutes on Zwift. Both could supposedly do ~335 W for an hour, but neither can go much faster than 26.5 mph on a TT bike. Either both are as aero as a a brick (would imply CdA of ~0.29) or both have PM that are so off as to render their power numbers meaningless. One of the two and I both showed up to a 8-mile TT, and each of us happened to have done the course twice: his two efforts on the TT bike, one of mine on the TT and one on my road bike. For our respective best efforts, I literally faster than him by a minute. For the respective slower efforts (mine done on my road bike), I was 15 seconds slower, and my effort was at 295 W, for an average of 25.6 mph (to his 25.8 mph).