Whilst I know that no two riders are the same, I do ride regularly with two legit 4.8/9 w/kg guys who are year on year at the pointy end of Haute Route events. I see what they have to put in to achieve these levels and my head simply spins. Nothing but respect for those amateurs who can plan and commit to such a lofty goal.
Put simply, I don’t have the time to train like they do so I’ve made the conscious decision to use what I have, better than I currently do.
Currently I sit around 4.4 w/kg at 315 FTP and 72kg. This year I dropped that down to 70kg with no noticeable drop in form or power. My main goal is to improve my strength endurance. Couple that with positioning on the bike and better nutrition, I think I can get quite a bit of return for my 315 FTP and 4.4 w/kg.
IMO some may be overvaluing 5 w/kg; its not the end all be all. I’d much rather have a legitimate sprint, great 1 minute power, or just a solid FTP. Those things are probably more effective to win races.
For me, I have to go all in on 5 w/kg (and am still 15w off at race weight). That’s great for races with elevation but around here they’re becoming very sparse, and I sacrifice my sprint and pop for that. TBF, I never had a sprint or 1m power, and I never won anything focusing on those. Being a climber is probably my best shot at winning, but if it weren’t I’d be a fool to focus on it.
Its probably a 5:1 ratio or flat races to climbing races, and I’d take a rider at 77kg with a 350 ftp (4.5 w/kg) with good pop over a 60 kg / 300w @ 5.0 w/kg. Power to weight doesn’t mean much on the flats, and heavier guys would be crazy to sacrifice lower mass to get there.
were you doing a lot of short power for crit racing? This year I focused on short power part of the curve and it has killed my fatigue resistance. Which is in-line with what some top level gurus like sebastian weber would preach. At 69 ml/kg/min at your age, you have a very good aerobic capacity, perhaps too high of anaerobic contribution pushing down your longer efforts.
Good insight however, over the years I’ve done a lot of everything and it doesn’t seem to matter. I always end up with similar power duration curves from year to year. I think it’s more to do with the nature of my job and how I have larger than normal blocks of days off to train but, longer than normal blocks away from the bike.
Good question…generally on the lower side about 85%, I’ll even drop it to tempo if I’m not quite feeling it…the key thing for me is the consistency and in January (after a good break) I obviously drop my FTP starting again at around 230w. Lastly those 3x30’ are done outdoors (have a 12k climb on my doorstep) the longest indoor I do is 3x20
I’m probably one of the guys people wonder if having correct values. I have NEO+Vector2+Powertap that all says i can “easely” avg 5W/KG avg when im in good shape, and i do have solid records showing close to 5W/KG on 2h my best 45 min NP is 5,55.
Sadly because im featherweight (64kg), and my genes/muscle types that is good for long steady, I have a hard time winning, and max 10% of my races favours me as furious says.
Seems the amatour races don’t have many or long climbes. Atleast where i race. So be happy to have lower FTP if you have better 1s-5min power comparet to FTP.
yeah, I’m currently reading Jan Olbrecht’s The science of winning and he makes it sound like for some individuals, the training adaptions that lower anaerobic contribution and/or convert fast-twitch over to oxidative fast-twitch eventually revert back to normal once that stimulus is gone. Giving a bit of credence to Coggan’s ideas about how sweet spot is better than focusing on VO2 max, you’ve already got a desirable VO2 max, so your main focus may need to mainly be TTE/fatigue resistance/fractional utilization. This year that is what I’m going to try and focus on, even suprathreshold intervals to be done on relatively lower recovery intervals to try and work in a range that is highly repeatable. Repeatability of an effort this year is going to trump any sort of absolute power target.
I think you’ll find that most riders at 5w/kg will have bf% pretty close to single digits. Thats really the difference between 4 and 5, as in all reality, pretty rare to have the FTP required otherwise.
Interesting. Yep I have done “some” SST via Frank Overton but, I too will focus a little more here this year. Maybe drop the overall volume. Do one long TSS ride a week but, focus on building up to maybe 180 minutes of SST and build into 3x20/2x30’s/1x60 at threshold. Finish off with a much shorter block of VO2 and sprint work closer to events…
I vaguely remember a former team mate who would ride with Travis McCabe a bit commenting how much they would ride tempo. Like do the shootout and then 3 hours of tempo! ouch. Not that I can or need to do that but, fatigue resistance is highly trainable IIRC listening to these guys…but, you have to work into it as you know. Just writing to say I agree with your insight.
Having done something similar last winter, I would recommend building in some intensity throughout. I came into spring feeling super strong, but even with a short intensity block I was extremely flat. Could ride for over 3hrs at 85% but god forbid I had to follow a sharp acceleration. Should’ve entered some long TTs…
This year I’m building more VO2 and even anaerobic efforts into my SS/tempo workouts, more similar to what you mention with McCabe. On a hard day I may do an hour or two of Z2/tempo, race full gas on Zwift for ~60min and finish with tempo/ss for another hour. I can cram in ~3500kj of quality work in 4hrs. Weekday might just be a shorter version, race then tempo, to hit 2000kj in a bit over 2hrs. I don’t really do many threshold intervals in this model, spending lots of time in Z4/5 racing already.
I’d love to know how many calories he’s ingesting per hour. This seems like a great case where he’d be over the 90g/hour that we’ve heard about before.
Can you imagine an FTP like this? If you got any separation in a crit you could just hold 460-490 watts the entire race!
. Great minds!