Wasn’t trying to offend, if that’s what happened, I was referring to the whole discussion point not an individual. I was trying to be clear. I don’t know who flagged that as hateful and abusive, but no I won’t be editing it.
We all fall into the trap of assuming everything is measured and known when we talk about a problem using specific numbers with certainty, when reality is not that cut and dried.
Our measurements are only to a certain level of confidence, the BBS model is imperfect, GPS routes are imperfect, and our execution is imperfect. Yet solutions are presented as simple maths.
I’ve used BBS, Rouvy and FulGaz to simulate races. On some occasions they have been eerily close, within minutes for an Ironman bike, on other occasions no relation at all.
For both of you, what was the target power per segment and what was your variation from it? Not actually asking you to post analysis of every pre/post race analysis, but I am certain you will find that there are instances where the time marches but the power does not, and vice versa.
Use the maths with less confidence, and use of ranges instead of specific numbers.
Where power is superior in controlled training settings, I would rely on RPE as equally weighted as power during races.
However, I would not encourage the audience reading this thread to back track the maths to create a target FTP to train towards, that’s a recipe for misery. Jonathon and some others will know their training strength and achievable fitness which is fine - I target 260 because I’m confident of hitting that in a season as I have before.
Other readers will be people who have never seen 300W, and yet will start setting themselves unachievable targets based on some of the advice here in this thread. The better paradigm is they train optimally and see what they achieve in hindsight.
It’s planning and setting goals. Anybody that’s gone outside and tried to hit a time/distance goal (Strava PR anyone? ) on a windy day understands that it’s just benchmarks. We know Jonathan has some leeway built into his plan, and he makes that clear.
Forest for the trees my friend. I don’t think anyone is saying if you do exactly x watts on an individual segment that you will always hit the time down to the exact second. Of course there is variability, but doing the math on a course like Leadville is a proven approach to get you really close most of the time.
Last year was a slow course and I think it was ‘23 that was really fast. Those kind of days might buy/cost you around 10 minutes vs the math estimate, but the math is still valuable. I don’t know if Jonathon’s plan has a buffer in for bad course conditions or not, id bet he needs a good course to have a shot at 7. I usually put in a 15 minute buffer for going under 9 and all of my big buckles fall between 8:40 and 8:55. Wattage was within 2-3 watts normalized.
