3 min k’s are very impressive numbers. Pro numbers when compared to pro football/soccer players. I would say you have great genetics 
15 years of riding seriously also provides great context to the time it takes to get to your level. I just need to keep chipping away and training smart, eating well and resting right.
I’m in this boat too! 43 and sitting around 3.4w/kg. I’m glad you asked this because all the pos encouragement is helping me too. This is the reason I decided to try TR. I constantly am asking myself if this is an achievable thing for me or if I’m blocked by some genetic wall. I’ll follow the program, we’ll see what happens!
Let’s put some perspective to this question…I am approaching 70 years old, and am currently. at 2.6 wkg,and will hit my goal of 3.0 wkg at the end of my build period just started. This will be the highest attainable for 150 lbs @205 ftp. Taking into account the generally accepted age-related decline is .25 wkg for each 10 year period, my FTP was probably the same as youre’s is now, but is certainly trainable to achieve your target. I will achieve mine too. Its a matter of focus, consistency, intensity and recovery.
Thanks, though I do remember running 5,000 meters on the track and getting lapped with guys running high 14s! I didn’t feel fast back then - it’s the company you keep.
To be fair, I was actually faster on the bike 7 or 8 years ago at over 5w/kg, so I’d say it took me 5 or 6 years to get to that level, which is still a lot of hours.
Keep at it! The biggest thing in my opinion, is consistency. I rarely miss a day of riding, I just sort of fit it in somehow. I rarely push things too hard, and try to keep my riding fun, doing fatbike in the winter and mtn bike and gravel riding in the summer. I also do training crits and very fast group rides.
Yeah, that would be me. But I think people assign "good genetics " generically a lot. I have very good running genetics, from the 40 right through distance, but very below average cycling genes. My all time FTP is 268 at 75kg, which is not terribly impressive.
Las a guy in my late 40s how do I best attempt to forecast my likely potential for improvement so I can then plug in some smart goals (stretching but not unrealistic)?
I know my current indoor FTP (307) after 6-ish months of structured training (SSB 1&2 and nearly completed short power build) - I had 2 years of unstructured riding under my belt before that. My measured indoor FTP has only gone up by about 4 or 5 points in that time but I confess to feeling like on the road my fitness improvements feel greater than that in terms of what I can hold for longer durations - with admittedly a bit of a drop off in absolute peak power.
Incidentally I also know my VO2 Max (if that’s the right way to express the measurement?) as it was tested during a work provided health check on an exercise bike at a medical facility - came out at 48 - not sure what 48 means or if it is good / bad / indifferent for a 47 year old larger male (6’3” tall with medium/ large frame) with my limited cycling experience?
I’m still overweight at 223lbs and 24%bf according to my home (Tanita) bf scales - weirdly my weight has gone up overall by about 5lbs whilst doing the structured indoor training but bf has remained fairly even fluctuating between 22.5 and 24 on the scales, my overall diet hasn’t wildly changed in that time.
Is there a way (maths wise?) I can work out what my VO2 Max would be (presuming my oxygen uptake doesn’t improve per-de but my weight loss means the figure normalised against weight improves) if I could drop my weight and bf back to what it was 6 or 7 years ago (about 198lbs and maybe 17 - 18%) over the longer term?
I’m just looking to identify a reasonable middle term goal - so for example would it be realistic if I continue using TR and all else being equal (illness etc) that I could aim for a 10% FTP increase by this time next year or is that too big a leap?
The VO2 thing is just a curiosity thing - acknowledging I am unlikely to remeasure this at any point soon plus I don’t really think I would use the information in any beneficial way other than being able to say I’ve seen an upswing.
I’m pretty ‘goals’ oriented (for better or worse) and whilst I realise process goals are important for longer term improvements, I am less motivated by them and find over a longer term working towards a specific outcome drives my adherence and compliance and commitment to a plan more effectively.
Any steer on what would be a reasonable aim for the next year would be appreciated.
NB: obviously I have provided limited background on sleep / nutrition / supplements / lifestyle etc so there will be a degree of assumptions to be made - I’m basically normal dude in terms of average levels of stress / sleep good diet etc
Thanks
With 6 months of structured training and only 2 years of riding, you almost certainly have significant room to improve. If you had a lab test for vo2 where they put a mask over your face and measured gas exchange, the best way to get an accurate point of comparison is to do another lab test. That’s the only way to really know what your vo2max is. If you just want to measure progress of Vo2max, most garmin devices or other cycling computers do a reasonable job of it based on power, HR, etc… You can also just do a 5 minute max test and compare power between those intervals. It doesn’t really tell the story of what your vo2max is, but the power number is actually more important. The only real value I see in knowing my actual vo2max is that it gives me an idea of what % of that number I’m working at. Even that isn’t terribly valuable because everyone’s efficiency ceiling is different (so could give false hope or make you think there is no more room for gains).
If you just want to see how losing weight will affect a current vo2 max number, just change the denominator of the equation. vo2max = milliliters of o2 consumed per minute divided by body weight in KG. If you are 101 Kg now with a vo2max of 48, then your max o2 consumption is 4848 ml o2 per minute. If you got down to 90Kg and your o2 consumption stayed the same, your vo2 max would increase to ~54 (If my math is right). That said, there is a lot of data indicating that you can improve your o2 consumption through training, so it’s kind of a pointless exercise. Our vo2max max genetic limits also decrease as we get older, but that doesn’t mean people can’t see increases as they age if they are still improving within those limits. There is also data showing that you can slow that decline through high intensity work.
Cool - that was sort of what I imagined.
I note all the points about the VO2Max stuff - all makes sense and thanks for the maths explanation which is helpful.
So would my hypothetical 10% in a year sound reasonable to you, or is it simply not possible to create some sort of reasonable target for the next year due to all the variables?
If it’s too difficult to create a reasonable target (for whatever reason) then fair enough - just interested to understand… 
According to this chart your VO2max is really good for your age:
Remeasuring VO2max is not worth it. How is it actionable? Would you train differently? No.
Your low hanging fruit is improved diet, resulting weight loss, and optimizing sleep and recovery as a masters athlete.
That’s a surprise! - but I’ll take it
Agreed - the question was only out of dumb curiosity - I have no plan to use that information for anything productive
Thanks - again this is along the lines of what I was thinking but good to get a second opinion.
Any view of the ‘improvement target’ setting - is this something unnecessary / unbeneficial ?
I think it often leads to disappointment! FTP just doesn’t keep going up and up. For example, pro riders often say that their numbers at the start of their career were about the same as in the end of their career but they develop more aerobic endurance over the years and become better athletes.
You’ve got it going for you that you’ve only been riding 2.5 years. That probably means you have more gains in you doing the same training.
At some point you max out and then you need to look at going from say 6 hours a week to 8 or from 8 to 10 or 12 to build even deeper aerobic fitness. More sweet spot or VO2 intervals will probably not do it. Adding 2 hours per week on average is 100 hours per year of aerobic training - that is huge IMO.
You max out again on higher hours and maybe you add strength training to get that last 5%. You optimize nutrition and everything else and you are probably a very strong rider but probably maxed out on FTP and will not see big further gains.
I think a 10% increase (over 30 watts) in FTP isn’t a great goal, especially when you have so much opportunity on the weight side. I’d focus there rather than trying to build a bunch of watts while dropping weight.
I think a 15% increase in w/KG (to around 3.45) is probably much more attainable (and sounds better on paper as well). Get down under 200lbs and add a handful of watts and you are there. I would also recommend getting a dexa scan to get a real assessment of body fat and test periodically to make sure you’re losing fat and not muscle.
Nice - thanks for the insight
So you are on TR. You have mentioned goals as targets, citing VO2 max. You and others have mentioned – and the who TR ecosystem plugs away at – FTP as the fundamental measurement. Both could be used as targets.
But the deeper question is what are you trying to get out of training on your bike? I mean questions like: are you training just to be a fitter and leaner you? Or are you training to race in some kind of event [road or other kind of riding]. Or are you training to be able to keep up in social / group rides or to do gran fondos?
Each aim implies different aptitudes and therefore different kinds of targets.
Eg: to keep up / do gran fondos. Finishing sprints are not important, but endurance and the ability to sustain high percentages of [preferably high] FTP are important.
Eg: to race. If a road race, then you need endurance and a sprint. If a mountain bike race or a crit, then you need to be able to handle surges. And so on.
Eg: to keep fit. Then presumably you want activities that will push your HR up periodically for short intervals and you want lots of fat burning.
So, decide on your aim. Then use the resources of the podcasts, blog and these posts to figure out what appropriate targets are. Eg, for me, I target group rides and gran fondos, so I target FTP and time to exhaustion at sweet spot. Those are my targets. TR provides a record of FTP. I use Personal Records to assess improvements from season to season in other target lengths of time.
Reading many of the posts on this forum leads me to the view that improvements in FTP are related to [1] training history, since shorter histories imply bigger potential gains; [2] training consistency and volume; [3] all the other variables that you invited us to assume away; [4] age; and [5] genetics. I’ve been training with TR for a couple of years, pretty consistently and I try to take care of myself. I’m also old enough to be your father. But in 2019 by FTP rose by 12.77 per cent [plus or minus errors in power recording, good or bad days and all the rest of it]. So, if that target is relevant to your aims, then 10 per cent is do-able, perhaps even conservative.
Good luck!
Thanks Michael - much good for thought here and very helpful 
Cheers
Dave
So further to my Halcyon Vs Vortex, I switched my bike back onto the Vortex and just finished another ramp test.
Started SSBLV2 at 201 on the Halcyon, just tested at 268 on the Vortex which at 68kg puts me in at 3.95 and I shut it down early because I didn’t feel like grinding myself all the way to failure so I think I may have been able to grind it to 4.
Next will be another ramp on the Halcyon soon.
I am 46, will be 47 in September and at 4.89w/kg, my goal is to go over 5 by the end of March
Can’t believe no one commented on this yet… I hope like hell I am (a) still this active at 70, and (b) still 3W/kg! Kudos to you, man!
Well that’s pretty damn awesome 
Nice work dude - albeit I now feel useless 
Mega kudos - still smashing it at the end of your 7th decade is extremely impressive and inspiring