TrainerRoad needs to buy intervals.icu pronto before Strava (or a more direct competitor) beats them to it. No offense, TR, but they seriously have the best cycling/tri analytics available. For free.
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Also found this really interesting on cycling analytics: How does your cycling power output compare? — Cycling Analytics
I don‘t think they have updated this post in years, however, it gives a good idea of where non-pro male and female cyclists are power wise.
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It looks like your 1hr power is higher than your 20m power and not much below your 5 min power. Am I missing something, or what is going on?
It is only the chart scaling. And yes my 20 min is the same as 30 min and close to 1h only because I have never done all out 20 min effott. It is always long over 30 min. My 5 power is a little bit higher but my FTP 83% of my VO2 max so these are fairly close.
I have never done any racing and this is my first year of riding a bike so all the values are from training or FTP tests.
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Lol. So you just picked up cycling a year ago and you are now a 4.5 w/kg?..Is this common?
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Could have been an athlete in a different sport before cycling.
I do not know if it’s common. I went from the couch (and I am really off the couch - close to two decades of no activity and desk job). Started with 3.0 w/kg at first FTP test. As a kid I was pretty fit and loved sport but then life happened. Now I am close to the midlife crisis so I wanted to get fit and this happened. The results are from Assioma Duo alwaych checked with the trainer power (so double check).
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I think TR should post a watt/kg bell curve or provide you with what your % is. I listen to the podcast and hear about the unbelievable 5 watt/kg tier. I also hear them tell people that they are fast at watt/kg well below that. I just don’t have a good feel for what is average and or a good benchmark to measure myself against. I know TR is all about making you faster but it would be helpful for me to set goals for myself based on other mortals. Seems like watt/kg would be the best universal measurement. I would also trust it more coming from real TR data from real users. Would anyone else find this helpful?
can we get this same graph for watt/kg? Even better if had a drop down for age groups.
The only real comparision is power at different times so 1sec, 1 min, 5 min etc. W/kg do not tell anything about rider profile (take for example track sprinter or cyclocross racer) and as a value it is only useful if you ride in a very hilly environment with many long climbes.
And you can always use intervals.icu that have this comparision on some bigger samples of riders.
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Bigger? Are you sure about that? I just checked and intervals.icu has 9017 male athletes, 3222 in their 30s and 1711 in my 35-39 age group. While I approve of the implied Dragonball Z meme from that first number, I’d be surprised if TR didn’t have more samples.
Not biger in comparision to TR but bigger than anecdotal samples from friends. Sorry for my lack of precision.
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God bless TR’s sweet-spot work and long Z2 rides (which TR doesn’t emphasize much, but should). In July, I was right around the 1st percentile for all durations past 1 minute.
Still 99kg and 212W FTP. But while a little running/swimming reduced my bike time, six months of 1 or 2 “sweet-spot progression” workouts and one two-hour Zone 2 ride each week have gotten me well on the way to that 5th percentile:
I should hit the 5th percentile across all time intervals pretty easily next year, and getting up to 8th percentile or so looks achievable as a stretch goal. A bunch of you have helped teach me how to do this… many thanks. 
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At 94kg and ~2w/kg I have a pretty messed up chart - but I am new to cycling (2 years - 99.9% of it on an indoor trainer) - At least I am slowly losing weight 
I did manage a couple of recent form sprints in Fletcher this week where I surpassed 200 RPM so the legs can move fast enough - they just don’t have the power or stamina (yet).
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Keep in mind that the intervals.icu population is not a normal cycling population. By its nature, it attracts people who will be on then high end the bell curve.
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Yes, both TR and IICU have userbases that clearly don’t represent the global cyclist population. That’s why I’m quite happy to be moving from the 1st percentile to roughly the 3rd, and to have (I believe) a reasonable hope of hitting the 8th or even 10th percentile with another year of training.
I’m thrilled to see these results PRECISELY because the userbase skews to the high end of the population’s bell curve, and I’ve been training for less than 2 years, and I’m still 50 pounds overweight, AND I have only 2-4 hours a week to spend on the bike. All things considered, I’m ecstatic. 
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Unless you are accounting for age, I think that it is very much on the LOW end of what is possible.
ETA some data.
Here is maximal power for non-sprint trained kids and adults across a wide range of ages. On average, it peaks in young adulthood at about 18 Wpk, which would top the ICU chart.
Similarly, mean power for young untrained men during a 30 second Wingate test is usually about 10 Wpk, which would also top the chart.
Coggan famously calculated that the the average young person could achieve 4 Wpk for FTP, which would also almost top the ICU chart.
Coggan famously calculated that the the average young person could achieve 4 Wpk for FTP, which would also almost top the ICU chart.
https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=2830698#p2830698
He was saying that even with training, most people will top out at 3.9W/kg due to genetics.
As for the paper you mention: given that we can safely assume that people on ICU have at least had some training, and your numbers are supposed to be averages, there is no way to reconcile both datasets, because this would mean that any average untrained person would top the ICU chart. And that clearly makes little sense.