Sounds familiar, no where near your level, but I got to 4.52 w/kg and then the body just shut down and it took me 3 months to recover. I now look at riding the bike in a very different way, enjoyment is key, most of us are not paid for this.
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C’mon now, wishful thinking is all we have:wink:
I’m just back on the bike for a bit under a year after five years on the couch. Family, four kids, job, etc. Only ever trained/raced 4-5 seasons ever but finally fell into a place where I’ve got the time and figured I’d give it a go. At this point it’s all for fun, right?
Personally, I’m not hung up on the w/kg number, but being strong overall. I’m around ~4.7 at the moment and could probably smash a HIIT block and drop a few pounds if I really cared about a number.
With my schedule killing my racing plans this season I’m enjoying my consolation prize of swapping Zwift races for intervals and knocking out big rides and taking KOMs with ease. Having fun basically.
Full transparency, I’m 12 months into training, 38 years old, 6’2” 158lbs, put in 12-17hrs/week, current CTL 120. Think I’m pretty fortunate with my genetics, but training my ass off too.
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The heck?! 420w threshold?? That’s like my best 2 minute power.
Wow, didn’t know that. Nice!
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There’s actually a fair bit of research showing endurance genetics are inherited primarily from the mother’s side.
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Most of your mitochondria come from your mom’s side fwiw.
Joe
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There is a tendency to place way too much importance on W/kg. For the majority of cyclists on here, improvements in W/kg should be the consequence of a training programme that prioritises other performance parameters. To my detriment, I’ve been guilty of chasing a higher W/kg, and I say that as someone who does all his riding in the mountains.
I’d emphasise increasing sustainable power, body composition (not body weight), your durability as an athlete, as well as repeatability of sustained efforts and increased workloads. In my opinion, if you’re not doing a lot of sustained climbs over the 30 - 40 minute mark, W/kg can be mostly ignored.
I remember seeing Michael Freiberg’s power data from when he won the National Road Championships. His W/kg was “relatively” average, but his NP was very impressive. It’s the same with guys like Phinney and Hayman. Raw power wins if you’re not going up big climbs, and raw power comes from having the right body composition.
I dug myself into a huge hole chasing improved W/kg numbers. My stupid ego 
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UPDATE: So I reached a 300w FTP on yesterday’s ramp test going into XCM Specialty, so mission 1 accomplished. Unfortunately I also gained a couple Kgs 
. So I’m at 3.82 w/kg at the moment. I was hoping to hit a 300 w FTP or 4.0 w/kg as a 2019 goal, so I guess I should be happy, but I’m disappointed I gained weight. My “A” race is in 5 weeks, so maybe I can still drop a few pounds.
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While I agree, you have to play to your strengths. Phinney, Cancellara, Hayman, are big dudes that can just motor out watts. Ewan, Cav, McEwen have great sprints. If you have that great; ultimately you have to take advantage of what you do best. I have a climbers build and body type and that’s my strength. At 5’7" with little fast twitch I’m not riding people off my wheel in the flats and training for that is a great way to stay mediocre.
I’ll also counter that most amateurs are fooling themselves if they want to keep a ‘heavy’ build to preserve watts. There’s really no reason in this sport anyone should be over 15% and almost everyone with a heavy build (in the lower amateur ranks) is running 20% or higher. If you have real mass that’s one thing but its honestly rare.
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I’m a similar size to you. 172cm and 61kg. I place more emphasis on body composition than actual body weight. I ideally try and keep BF around 8%. A “heavy build” means more muscle mass, not fat tissue. I’m not sure it’s possible to have a power to rate ratio above 5W/kg if your BF is over 10%. Once you start trying to get your BF below 10% it becomes a real juggling act to build or maintain the right power to hit 5W/kg. The point I was trying to make, is that for most amateurs it’s not worth the effort if they’re not doing big climbs. They’ll likely make more progress by focusing on increasing their FTP, their ability to repeat efforts around FTP as well as increasing their ability to recover from an increased training volume.
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This was a question I was thinking on recently, so this has been helpful to read and learn from others.
Background:
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I’m ~148lbs, 5’8’’ tall, and have been biking structured for ~3 years come Sept’19. (My actual biking started summer of '16 but was just riding outside on combo of hybrid/road bike ~5.5 hrs/wk to make up for physical activity given running injury. )
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Started at age 31 (34 now) with little to no exercise since high school soccer (I did do some running as adult, about 10 mi/wk for about 18 months prior to biking).
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My initial goal in riding was not so much racing but more toward improve fitness (i.e., replace running/stop bonking), keep up with faster friends, and ride in nearby blue ridge mountains well.
Training Regimen:
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Basically I’ve followed TrainerRoad’s Sweet Spot High Vol (sub Sunday ride for longer enduro outside) then Gen Build High Vol over last 3 years back and forth - about 2 of these cycles per year maybe cutting 2nd one back a little, sometimes try a little of Specialty plan. I’ve taken 2-3 wks off every Fall.
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Hours: 219 (2016), 479 (2017) , 514 (2018) and so far in 2019 I’ve done 352 (est 530 by eoy).
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See below for TSS.
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I really enjoy endurance riding and given my body type it suits me well (not the best fast twitch, never got over 1000 watts on a sprint
).
Some other things:
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In 2018 I started eating better (more veggies/fruit, whole grains, etc). This helped a lot w/ recovery.
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In spring 2019 I started a new job, it’s been a bit stressful and has certainly impacted my biking hobby. So last 6 months has been mainly Sweet Spot work and a bit more casual riding for stress relief (when I’m stressed I don’t do well with biking given sleep, etc and impacts my work).
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There’s 2 peaks below, I got both those on SS HV II adding in 4/5hr Sunday rides at ~70% ftp. I feel like I could do SS work all year and be fine ha. I’m actually going to try some VO2 max work over next few weeks - doing mid-General Build vs High … latter destroys me.
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Last few months not a lot of improvement, but maintaining a higher level of fitness consistently than in years past.
I’m at 3 year mark about now - wondering what I can expect in next year as well. Reading above, sounds like could be like +10watts/year (or maybe I’ve maxed out at around 4.5w/kg). I’ve read/heard from other sources it takes about 3 years (for us normal folks) to get good base/adaptations. I’m not trying to loose weight to achieve a higher w/kg ratio.
Appreciate any and all advice!
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Given your high school soccer background, you are probably around the normal plateau point for athletic people who picked up endurance sports later in life. Most trained soccer/tennis players end up with a measured VO2max in the mid 60s range, which corresponds pretty well to the 4-4.5w/kg range (depending on weight).
My best recommendation is to get a really good idea of your FTP and your VO2max power and figure out what needs the most improvement; once you figure that out, you’ll probably want to target that energy system specifically and track progress to see if you can move it. If you can, great! If you can’t, then you might have to find a different way to get at the adaptations you are looking for.
Based on peeking your profile, I’d suggest doing a properly long test as well as doing some real all out VO2 efforts.
Might be oversimplifying things, but your peaks line up pretty well with your most consistent and highest TSS training blocks.
Given that your already north of 4.5w/kg I’d wager that more and/or different training stimulus is going to be needed on a consistent basis to improve much further.
The flip side of that is it may not be worth it if you’re current life situation doesn’t allow for consistency and good recovery. Just enjoy your fitness.
I’ve learned the hard way that consistency becomes much more important in keeping healthy and improving once the training stress gets to a certain point. If you break down it’s not worth it.
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thanks @stevemz.
I plan to give both a longer FTP assessment and VO2max power measurements a go to see what could use some work. Per the latter, what’s a good way I can measure that? And if that’s the limiter (which I’d place my bet on), is this basically doing more VO2max type of work/intervals in my training?
A rested all out 5-6 minute effort will give you a good idea. It’s not perfect and would be better if you have some sort of modeling software, but it’s close enough.
If the ratio of your FTP to VO2 power is high (85-90%) then you probably need to look at increasing VO2max
If it’s low (in the 70-80% range), then you should look at FTP work.
It gets a little bit more complicated when we talk about anaerobic contribution, but those are the basics.
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@stevemz ah ok, makes sense.
thanks again. if I can get some consistent training in I’ll try to update in a month or 2 with progress.
Wow, that concept makes sense. I’ve been trying to determine how I should proceed with training. I have a 5 min power of 376 and a 20 min power of 303, so about a 80% ratio. I definitely need to continue FTP work (longer intervals I assume).
Thanks 
You shouldn’t use your 20 minute power as your FTP, just FYI. Your real FTP will be lower by at least 5%, probably more, especially if your 5 minute power is 375.
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