I agree with the points made here.
Covid allowed for a really consistent training period with good health for me. Back to work last September, as I am a teacher, and the school was a disease pit. Lots of bugs and colds flying around, training was compromised every 3-4 weeks and no progress. April things settled down and with more consistency came more watts.
I’ve not given myself any week or two planned periods off bike but I think they would be beneficial.
Another question about that photo…
Why is everyone strung across the track/road (?) like a pro peloton after they’ve decided that’s enough riders in the break?
Isn’t it a crit?
I’ll put your theory to test as I’ve planned my first week off in a couple of years. Well actually, it will be 4.5 weeks off and I didn’t have a week off since I broke my arm 7 years ago. My cycling during summer wasn’t going great so it was a good time to plan some extended vacations without a bike.
I don’t think either has applied to me 
I hit 5w/kg for 1 hour power in early September. I’d been around 360-370W (for an hour) and 77-78kg for a lot of summer, but was travelling and not riding consistently. After getting back from holidays I had a really solid 3 weeks of riding (12-14hrs/week) which both dropped weight and improved fitness, and I hit 375W @ 75kg for about 1 week of peak fitness. Mostly, my fitness came from riding my MTB hard on a regular basis.
I started riding MTB in 2020 after about 20 years of not riding, though I had good strength and fitness from weights, running, rowing, misc sports. Strava suggests I rode ~100 hrs in 2020, and ~250hrs in 2021 and 2022. We got a good spin bike (with power meter, if it’s to be believed) around Christmas of 2020, and I’d ride it semi-regularly through winters but with no structure or plan.
One thing I’m good at is suffering. Before riding, indoor rowing had been my focus, and in 2020 I had the top age-class 10000m time in my country on the concept2 database. I certainly didn’t hop into cycling without a good base of fitness.
That really does not seem a huge amount of riding time to hit 5w/kg. For comparison it took me circa 500hrs riding time a year to hit 5w/kg (1hr at 325w)…then I read this…
Seems genetics and previous sporting background helps… who knew 
nice work!
I accidentally deleted a reply when I went to edit it and saw a typoe.
I think you guys may be discounting the fitness and leg strength I had from rowing. In fact, I suspect most of my W/kg gains have been weight loss and adaptations to cycling from rowing, rather than improvements in fitness. I’ll give specifics to show what i mean. In 2020 at age 39 and approx 180lbs, I had Concept2 times of 6:40.X (never got under 6:40 
) for 2000m and slightly over 36:30 for 10000m. While these are not world class, they are pretty competitive. One thing to note is that indoor rowing times are independent of weight - the more power you put into the machine, the faster it goes. Most high-level rowers are 6’4 or taller and well over 200lbs. Concept2 has a weight-adjustment calculator to help lighter people compare themselves with people who are rowing size, and it suggests my 10000m time was “worth” about 33:30. If you look at the Concept2 ranking database for 2022, 33:30 would have been around the 5th fastest verified time in the world. Obviously the weight-adjustment needs to be taken with several handfuls of large salt grains, but it does suggest my aerobic rowing fitness may have been at or near world class.
kpedal - I don’t think 5.5W/kg is realistic for me as I don’t have the training time necessary. I’m hoping to get about 400 hrs in for this offseason+season, and I’ve started to learn/research cycling training. Thanks for the note about the intensity trap; I’d definitely been doing a large proportion of intensity. I do want to make small improvements before next season as I plan to race some gravel/XC.
Thanks for sharing this!
How do you calc your avg daily or weekly load?
I hope that I can post soon to this thread!
Last week I did 42 minutes indoors at 397 W avg with Kolie Moores test protocol, TTE is at about 42-45 minutes (50 if my life would depend on it). Power meter in the smart trainer reads inline with the power meter spiders on my other bikes. Body weight with all fluid retention from hard workouts was 85 kilos in the time of the test. Just had two weeks of threshold intervals and long Z2 rides before this as I had my off season so I have very good start for the training season. I try to do a threshold block which will last to Christmas, but I assume that I will get my FTP during winter to 405-410 W. I think my 5 min max is now at 500 W.
I try to chase that high W/kg with just doing quality training and eating healthy so that I recover well. I am a former strength athlete so I have still a lot of upper body muscle mass to lose, but my body fat % is quite ok as veins and muscles are somewhat defined already. I think that a couple of kilos of body fat will get burnt during training this winter as I train 15 to 20 hours per week on “on-weeks”. Last winter I lost 15 kilos as I was 98 kilos (FTP at maybe 360 W) when I began structured training after being just riding hard for fun a couple of years. So I assume that it wouldn’t be smart to just try to get the weight down as the power has been increasing very well all the time. I race gravel and I haven’t lost any races in the uphills yet. I have more to work in race starts and technical parts as sketchy downhills.
I think the best bet will still be to work on power. So far it has been fun to chase groups during races and don’t get as tired as others.
Glad it was of use! I might update it to reflect the end of my 22/23 season. Managed to continue to progress, at least from a TTE perspective hitting 5w/kg for 60m in a road bike TT towards end of Aug and then made a breakthrough in my 5m power (400w) in Hill Climb season.
I use intervals.icu to do this. Go to the Totals page on the left hand side and then at the top select a time period (eg. Jan 1st 2022 to todays date) then look at total Load and divide it by the number of Weeks, then divide it by 7. This gives an average for both weekly and daily. Obviously a little higher for daily if you take a rest day etc.
Eg. For my year to date total Load…
31461/47 Weeks = 669 weekly avg.
699/7 days = 95 daily avg.
Ah thanks for helping.
I also use intervals.icu.
In 2021 i make it till 4.6 w/kg in the period december 2020 - 1 may 2021.
In 22 weeks: 12069/22 week = 548 TSS/week and 78 daily avg.
In that period i did not do vo2max, so i will try this year again with a shorter (but steeper) base, followed with FTP and Vo2max, to make it till 5 w/kg.
Skip the french fries, eat plain rice
Rowing is one sport that seems to translate well to cycling. You get the aerobic fitness, and generate leg strength through somewhat similar movement patterns. Not exact, but similar loading to cycling with minimal impact, especially relative to something like running.
So you came to the game with muscles already developed for similar movement pattern, and high-end aerobic fitness that translated well to the bike. Where you go from there is up to you and how much volume you want or are willing to do on the bike!
My opinion always is that if you want high FTP, rowing is the way to go. On the other hand if you are build like a cyclist, rowing is definitely sport for you
Yes that is true! I often wonder how I would done as a rower, but it isn’t so common sport in my country. I come to cycling from hammer throw. I can’t imagine how that has helped me to get to this fitness on the bike. It is all about neuromuscular power and middle body/leg strength at quite high body weight. I was 109 kg (180 cm tall) at heaviest but was strong too. Did 170 kilos in power clean once. One thing that I remember was that I could train very hard compared to others, but lacked the needed agility in the circle. I wasn’t so quick either. Maybe it has something to do with genetics.
Yeah, I came to cycling from running, so I have bone density for days, but am weak AF. 
I am a junior lol
rowing is too hard.
it’s like cycling backwards while having to do a track stand with no hands.
but if you fall over, you get hypothermia.
I know this is necro’ing a pretty old thread, but I felt like tossing my own experience out there for general perspective. I’m currently at 63.7kg & 335w FTP, which puts me around 5.25w/kg. 175cm & 32 years old. This is the highest my w/kg has been in my history with the sport.
Since 2017 I’ve been hovering around 5w/kg. I first got into cycling in the summer of 2011.
Between 2015 - 2023, my smallest year was 450 hours. 2023 was my biggest at 630. Currently sitting at 135 hours for 2024. My total ride time on Strava is 5343h 39m (2012 - 2024), and I’d say that’s not far from reality. Maybe missing 150-200 hours?
I had a coach between 2013 - 2019, but I’ve mostly coached myself since 2020. I’ve had help from a few friends who work for a big coaching company in the US, one of them being my former coach. I ask them questions sometimes, but mostly just read a lot online.
I went from mostly sedentary in 2010 to road riding for fun to joining my college’s club team. I fell in love with road racing and I’ve raced ever since. Mostly road, but a few big seasons of mountain & gravel too. I still think about myself as a relatively “new” cyclist because most of my friends have been riding much longer than I have, and have been much strongr. But I guess I have been riding and training for 12+ years now.
I’ve only had TrainingPeaks since November 2015 (bought my first power meter that year) and my first test logged there was 302w. So, over 8.5 years I have gone from 302 → 335. I’m not very good at math, but that’s a 9%(?) increase, so around 1% per year? I’ve always done 20 minute power tests as that’s what my coach asked me to do.
I think I’d say I got here by sticking it out for a little over a decade. But, most of my biggest “gains” have come in the last few years. I’ve always been semi-serious, but I never properly looked at my nutrition while training. I was a buy & hoard fancy SiS / Clif products for race day kind of rider. I stuck to the old “eat 1 thing every hour” idea. Usually a clif bar or pop tart during training rides. Looking back I was almost always shelled when I finished a long endurance ride or even short rides with intervals.
Now I’m big on the carbs 24/7. Never not eating. Coincidentally my weight has come down, probably because my volume has increased. I simply feel better on the bike all the time. Religiously taking in between 60-90g/hour while riding. I do track overall nutrition as well now via MyFitnessPal, I’m worried about being in too large of a deficit.
I also used to take “endurance rides” as meaning just noodling around. I didn’t focus on staying Z2 until a couple of years ago. That has really helped a lot. And now that I’m fueling that properly, well, it’s achievable. I’d crush myself if I was still choking on pop tart crumbs.
Coincidentally… I’m not that good at road racing! I had some success in college. I’ve also done well in the gravel / mountain bike scene. But bigger results in my true love, road, have eluded me. I found this thread just looking for training resources. Slow day at work!
You must have won races in the 3/4s, no?