Looking back at a century ride I did over the summer. My time was 4:43 for the 100 miles with an average power of 240 and a norm power of 271. I did a short brick run (6 miles) afterwards and felt great. At the time of this ride, I had my FTP set at 305 but I’m pretty much a mental wuss when doing this test and always feel I underperform.
This may come off as a pretty stupid question to you knowledgeable power folks but would I report my power for the 4 hours and 43 minutes as 240 or 271??? I know if it was my ride for an IM the VI would suck! I’m asking because I was thinking about my FTP for that time period. If it would be 240 then my FTP was probably pretty much spot on? If my power for the 4:43 ride is reported as 271 then my FTP may be set too low???
Normalized power is going to better reflect the kind of effort it was. 89% of FTP for 100 miles isn’t impossible, but most people wouldn’t feel great after that for a 6 mile run probably.
If you look at your mean maximal power profile (average/normalized) for the time period around that ride you may get more clues to suggest your FTP was set low. For instance if you did any 40-60 minute efforts where norm power was > 305
I wish I had the data to report but I lost that Garmin (left it on top of my car). I keep a notebook where I write down my workout info.
It was a group ride where I was with about 6 other guys. My time was mostly spent at the front except when we encountered hills. I had to really push the watts on most hills to keep up with the smaller guys.
Normalized power is going to better reflect the kind of effort it was. 89% of FTP for 100 miles isn’t impossible, but most people wouldn’t feel great after that for a 6 mile run probably.
If you look at your mean maximal power profile (average/normalized) for the time period around that ride you may get more clues to suggest your FTP was set low. For instance if you did any 40-60 minute efforts where norm power was > 305
or greater than 1 hour efforts at 305
etc
Yes, I had another hard group ride where my NP was 318 for 80 minutes. Typically, when I do my 20 minute test, I cannot hold enough power to say my FTP is that high (mentally, I suck at the 20 minute test) so I go with what I test for the 20 minutes (minus 5%) and that is why I had my FTP set at 305.
I’m still learning to understand power and how to use it to guide my races. Did not want to think, “hey, I can try and hold 270 watts for my next IM and then run a marathon” because I would have thought 240 (avg watts) was the number to use for comparison (or learning for me).
A 100 mile bike with a run afterwards is the perfect way to set a power goal for an IM, and normalized power is a better thing to look at than average for that purpose.
So if you did 270 watts for 4:43 in a group ride with lots of hard surges, you should be able to do around 270 average for a flat ironman, or 270 normalized for a hilly ironman etc.
For some people Normalized power will get a lot of optimistic if you have lots of hard 30 second or less efforts in the ride, and it sounds like you did. So maybe dial it back 10 watts.
Your FTP is good for setting training zones, but ironman pacing should be set by practice rather than some fixed % of FTP.
Normalized power is going to better reflect the kind of effort it was. 89% of FTP for 100 miles isn’t impossible, but most people wouldn’t feel great after that for a 6 mile run probably.
If you look at your mean maximal power profile (average/normalized) for the time period around that ride you may get more clues to suggest your FTP was set low. For instance if you did any 40-60 minute efforts where norm power was > 305
or greater than 1 hour efforts at 305
etc
Yes, I had another hard group ride where my NP was 318 for 80 minutes. Typically, when I do my 20 minute test, I cannot hold enough power to say my FTP is that high (mentally, I suck at the 20 minute test) so I go with what I test for the 20 minutes (minus 5%) and that is why I had my FTP set at 305.
I’m still learning to understand power and how to use it to guide my races. Did not want to think, “hey, I can try and hold 270 watts for my next IM and then run a marathon” because I would have thought 240 (avg watts) was the number to use for comparison (or learning for me).
A 100 mile bike with a run afterwards is the perfect way to set a power goal for an IM, and normalized power is a better thing to look at than average for that purpose.
So if you did 270 watts for 4:43 in a group ride with lots of hard surges, you should be able to do around 270 average for a flat ironman, or 270 normalized for a hilly ironman etc.
For some people Normalized power will get a lot of optimistic if you have lots of hard 30 second or less efforts in the ride, and it sounds like you did. So maybe dial it back 10 watts.
Your FTP is good for setting training zones, but ironman pacing should be set by practice rather than some fixed % of FTP.
Was this century ride non-stop or did you stop along the way? Is the 4:43 the total time or just the time you spent moving? Because if you are stopping every 20 miles for 20 minutes, that is going to inflate your numbers.
why don’t you download your data? ie why track in a notebook?
Part laziness and part old fashioned. I am a techno-phobe. Its pathetic but my wife takes care of anything electronic around our house.
If you have an ANT++ version, it should have come with a USD stick. Plug that into your computer, install the garmin device agent software and then it will upload to the website automatically. It took me a few minutes to setup, so even if you spend 2 hours installing it and setting it up over the long term you should save time/effort, on top of having richer information to make more informed training decisions, further saving you time/effort.
Was this century ride non-stop or did you stop along the way? Is the 4:43 the total time or just the time you spent moving? Because if you are stopping every 20 miles for 20 minutes, that is going to inflate your numbers.
Yes, good point, unless you set your power meter to keep recording, which you should, but some won’t let you.
Also it is a failing of seemingly both WKO 3 and Golden Cheetah, that even if a power meter pauses, but correctly reports the shift in time, they won’t accurately handle that when computing average and normalized power.
for the lose.
what I do currently when this happens is chop the ride up until multiple workouts. otherwise you get misleading normalized power sometimes
Was this century ride non-stop or did you stop along the way? Is the 4:43 the total time or just the time you spent moving? Because if you are stopping every 20 miles for 20 minutes, that is going to inflate your numbers.
Also, for the love of god download your data.
I know, I know…I need to get with the times and download the data. Now I’ll have to go and look for the Garmin stick that plugs into the computer.
I only stopped once and it was quick enough to get more water and go. Since I had an IM coming up, I was treating it like a training ride (sort of…I sure did not do well at keeping the VI low). The 4:43 was moving time. Total time was 4:45:46.
Unfortunately, I did not get to do the IM (life got in the way).
