Get a decent coach will be your best chance of success. I wasted a lot of years not having a coach.
My VO2 max is currently 60 but has been recorded as high as 65, my FTP at peak was 310w at 71kg.
Yep this is for sure the case. I not a fan of formulae like this - like the 220 minus your age heartrate problem.
I like the 220-age heart rate problem. It tells me that I must be physiologically 6 years younger than I actually am
Well this is just my observations from lab data I’ve personally seen. I’m sure there are outliers. I’d love for someone to come along and bring me lab tested vo2 max and lactate / performance data and prove me wrong, but it would highly unlikely that anyone could sustain greater than 90-92% of their vo2 max for 30-60 mins, or have greater than 24-25% efficiency even in optimal conditions. In order to raise the glass ceiling, your vo2 will have to go up.
Interesting, says my potential is 3.9 W/Kg. I was at 3.5/6 W/Kg last summer.
I wouldn’t over think it. Raising volume and adding structure are both going to be beneficial.
TrainerRoad could definitely help you in this regard, especially if you haven’t done structure before. A good coach, which would be more costly, is also likely to get good results.
You are also still very young, so there are going to be year over year benefits from consistent training to be gained as well.
It makes sense that it is a cap, with the caveats you mentioned (e.g. efficiency unknown), but of course with many other variables like blood plasma volume.
Agree with all that, but I was just trying to highlight that you can’t calculate an individual’s potential FTP based on vo2max without the context of how efficient they are turning the o2 burn into power. Yes, there are practical limits to how much work someone can do for a given amount of o2 burned, but it’s going to vary by individual. And there is an old study (linked below) that’s often referenced showing an inverse relationship in world class cyclists between vo2max and efficiency. So, folks with the higher vo2max tend to turn less of that o2 into work, while a person with a lower vo2max tends to be more efficient. The ones with high vo2max and high efficiency are your unicorns. You still aren’t likely to see riders in the world tour with a vo2max under 70, but not all of those guys are 80+.
I’m 6’2 or 6’3. Don’t really know, but my FTP is 3.92456 w/kg. We try to make the numbers we worry about as high as possible.