at under 3watts/kg I did 1:04 last year, wasn’t flat though, lot of turns too.
someday you bastages will listen to my aero weenie advice =)
Really? Holy! What do you look like on your bike?
Not sure if 20 minute tests are FTP…I thought 20 minute tests were Threshold Power while FTP might be better estimated from a 40K TT or Normalized Power from a hard 1 hour ride…let me know what you guys think…I might have been using the wrong numbers to get my zones right!
FTP = ‘Functional Threshold Power’
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Right…so anyone who’s using a 20 minute test to get their FTP is using the wrong test and overestimating their** FTP**…I’ve seen something written that the best way to derive FTP from a 20 minute test is to multiply CP20 by .85…or just get after it for an hour
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I’ll through in my 2 cents and say 4.0 watts/kg is above average for the average Joe. I ride with a lot of cat 4 and 3 road racers and some respectful tri guys. I finish in the top 3rd of the field on a road race in Cat 4, top 4 to 5 place in a mountain bike race (Sport Cat 2) and I don’t get dropped in crits racing Cat 4 and Cat 3/4 fields. On the weekend hammer-fest when I let the animals go off the front I hang well with the strong tri guys.
I can hang with stronger Cat 4’s and 3’s for a good 2 hours, but after two hours they start to kick my ass, particularly on the long climbs. I out climb most people, thus I consider myself above average for an average Joe, but 1/3 of the guys in a road race kick my ass.
My last FTP test was a smig over 4.0 watts/kg, which unfortunately is not much better than my prior test about two months ago which was right at 4.0 watts/kg.
I train with a half ass plan and life gets in the way of it often, so I think an FTP of 4.0 is doable for most with some work.
I agree.
FTP is just a number, useful for tracking your own fitness, but not so much for comparing athletes.
Also very useful for selling books, power meters, and coaching plans…
I think you’ve got it backwards. W/kg is more useful to talk about since it corrects for body mass. If I’m 250lbs and have an ftp of 300, that’s not really anything to write home about and I’m likely not setting the world on fire with my cycling. On the other hand if I have that same 300 ftp at 140lbs, I’m likely firmly FOP in triathlon bike splits and even (potentially) quite competitive in amateur bike racing.
Everything within reason, I agree that if I had to choose either one or the other, W/Kg would be a more useful metric to me than overall FTP. I never said that FTP was more important than W/Kg, in fact that my point was that it is not very meaningful to draw conclusions without having both.
Perhaps its just N=1 here, but I’m fairly sure I have higher W/Kg than most of the guys I ride with who routinely make me suffer when we are riding on the flats. When we he hit hills I can often cruise by when these same people are grimmacing and get spit off my wheel. Right back into the flats and its back to working hard for me, terrain makes a huge difference. Body composition (very important for raw power versus W/kg) will always be dependent on the type of racing you do and your goals. Look at Cancellara (180lbs, god knows what FTP) versus Andy Schleck (140lbs, sky-high W/Kg), both suited to very different styles of riding.
Right…so anyone who’s using a 20 minute test to get their FTP is using the wrong test and overestimating their** FTP**…I’ve seen something written that the best way to derive FTP from a 20 minute test is to multiply CP20 by .85…or just get after it for an hour
I don’t think anyone (who knows what they are doing at least) is using their max 20 min power for their FTP. There are many ways given by various coaches out there to estimate your FTP, including as you mentioned multipling an all out 20 min effort by a scaling factor. However, I think a much more common approach would be to do the 2x20’ (2’) approach, among others.
Watts are watts, and power is power, and body mass matters.
W/KG matters a whole lot more when going uphill.
Pure watts/power matters a whole lot more than w/kg in flat races.
I’m 95kg, and my FTP is 345, giving me a 3.6 w/kg. Solid Cat 4 #s. However in a flat TT I’m putting up times/#s near the front of the Cat 3 pack. In a climbing TT I’m near the bottom of the Cat 4s, and I consider myself a fairly decent climber. I can crush some guys in a 20 min climb that would destroy me in a 2 hour climb. Efficiency matters. There is no magic bullet or formula—depending on what type of race/event you want to focus on should dictate your training much more than simply pursuing the 4.0 w/k. If you are looking at crits, your recovery ability & building your 30-60 sec power (sprint) is much more important than your ability to hold 4.0 w/k for 60 min. If you are racing an IM, your ability to effectively TT at .70 IF w/minimal effort is much more important than your ability to generate 1500 watts. Its almost impossible, without YEARS of volume riding, to do everything well (i.e. pointy end of the spear). The question you shouldn’t be asking yourself is how do I get to 4.0, but rather what do I need to do within my life constraints to get to the pointy end of my age group/racing cat/weight class in my chosen sport/event & then train accordingly.
Watts are watts, and power is power, and body mass matters.
W/KG matters a whole lot more when going uphill.
Pure watts/power matters a whole lot more than w/kg in flat races.
Yes, that’s why little ol’ me made it up to cat. 1 in the crit-centric midwest despite having a functional threshold power in my youth no greater than yours.
Let’s do some figgerin’…
The average healthy but sedentary, college-aged male has a VO2max of approximately 45 mL/min/kg. However, I have seen it argued based on studies of, e.g., aboriginal tribes (and there are population data from Europe as well as military inductees here in the US to suppor the conclusion) that the “default” VO2max of the average human male is closer to 50 mL/min/kg, and the only way to get below this is to assume a couch-potato lifestyle, gain excess weight, etc. (and/or grow old, of course). So, I’ll go with that latter number.
With short-term training, VO2max increases by 15-25% on average, with another perhaps 5-10% possible (on average, anyway) with more prolonged and/or intense training. That gives a total increase of 20-35%, so I’ll go with 30% just for argument’s sake.
So, if VO2max is, on average, 50 mL/min/kg and increases by, on average, 30%, that means that the average Joe ought to be able to raise their VO2max to about 65 mL/min/kg with training. Indeed, there are many, many, many, MANY amateur endurance athletes with VO2max values of around that number (not to mention the fact that athletes in team sports with an endurance component - e.g., soccer - often have a VO2max of around 60 mL/min/kg, something that is also true in other sports that you don’t normally consider to be of an endurance nature, e.g., downhill skiing or motocross - i.e., motorcycle - racing).
The question then becomes, how high might functional threshold power fall as a percentage of VO2max (again, on average), and what does this translate to in terms of a power output? The answer to the former is about 80% (LT, on average, being about 75% of VO2max in trained cyclists), which means that in terms of O2 consumption, a functional threshold power corresponding to a VO2 of 65 mL/min/kg * 0.80 = 52 mL/min/kg could be considered average. If you then assume an average cycling economy of 0.075 W/min/kg per mL/min/kg, this equates to…
3.9 W/kg
So anybody can make it to 4, 4.5, or 5w/kg with a little training, according to this thread.
Here’s one Cat 1, State Champion, National Medallist that disagrees. Been busting my ass for years and happy to finally be over 4w/kg.
Either somebody needs to look at a large sampling of power data, or you all need to calibrate your PMs.
So anybody can make it to 4, 4.5, or 5w/kg with a little training, according to this thread.
Apparently you didn’t read what I wrote. The calculations that I laid out indicate that the average person could NOT make it (much) over 4 W/kg even after years of dedicated training.
Here’s one Cat 1, State Champion, National Medallist that disagrees.
What event(s)?
Either somebody needs to look at a large sampling of power data, or you all need to calibrate your PMs.
So just out of curiousity, when was the last time that you calibrated yours?
AC,
What does this mean in the real world?
If you were to take 100 subjects who were able to achieve 3.9W/kg based on a 2 x 20’ test and have them do a 40K TT, what do you think their avg. power would be in W/kg? And what type of variation in speed do you guess you might see?
If you were to draw a bell curve here on ST around Power at FTP , I think the fat part of the curve would be around 250W.
Taking a less well founded guess , I’ll pick 175lbs as an average weight for the guys, or about 80kg.
That works out to 3.125 W/Kg.
I think if you put someone with that profile on a Professional style program without work, family, etc demands.
you could get that FTP up to 300, and the weight down to 75kg, and there is your 4 W/Kg. That is a 20% improvement in power…
not a no-brainer, but doesn’t seem ridiculous.
For myself, I know I could probably stand to lose 8-10Kg if I dedicated myself to a diet (that would get me back to High School weight)
and would be in the 4w/kg range.
It also depends what you mean about ‘Average Joe’ however - I think the Average ST reader is already at the upper 5-10% fitness wise
of the population as a whole. I think if you threw a dart a phone book, there would be a lot smaller % who could get to that level.
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If you were to take 100 subjects who were able to achieve 3.9W/kg based on a 2 x 20’ test
Meaning that they could routinely average 3.9 W/kg during long intervals done in training?
and have them do a 40K TT, what do you think their avg. power would be in W/kg?
If the answer to my question above is yes, then 3.9 W/kg.
And what type of variation in speed do you guess you might see?
That would depend on their sizes, positions, equipment, course conditions, etc.
VO2 of 65 mL/min/kg
pretty inspiring to know our potential is about a 2:35ish marathon.
Or the exact opposite 
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Hi Andy,
I posted before your response was up; wouldn’t begin to consider contradicting The Man Who Wrote the Book… Twice. But I do feel free to freely question most of the other posters. In God we trust, all others bring data, right? Thank you for bringing data.
Road, Crit & Track, respectively
My unit is probably due for a little trip to South Dakota, (although it is in very close agreement with a CT factory calibrated 2 weeks ago) but I do calibrate (sorry, zero offset) with the Garmin before every ride, and try to pedal the wrong direction at least 4 times a couple of times per ride.
I posted before your response was up
Odd, then, that your reply indicates that it is in response to mine. Quirck of how the software works, perhaps?
I do feel free to freely question most of the other posters. In God we trust, all others bring data, right?
Oh, sure, and thanks for answering my questions.