348 Watts for 20 min! No idea how much she weighs but that’s gotta be 5w/kg+
Guess the real question is how accurate is a Peloton bike?
Serious question and not in any way meant to disrespect her (she would drop me in a heartbeat).
What’s the pm like on a peloton bike?
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The Peloton bikes massively over read power.
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Yup. She’s a superb athlete but Pelelton bikes have accuracy issues so I wouldn’t trust any wattage from it.
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Was everybody in that All-Star Ride on a Peloton bike?
I have a Peloton and dual side Assioma pedals. It’s been on my to do list to compare the two readings. The Peloton is more for my family as I don’t like to ride it. Perhaps, the comparison will move higher on the list now.
I came from a running background so I’m well aware of Colleen Quigley and her running talent.
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I used to have one and liked it but the accuracy is not even the same between bikes. Could be right on, high, low, you get the idea. Real world no way but as long as it is consistent and getting a good workout who cares.
The leaderboard is a joke on there but it is more about competing against your PR numbers. Not like she is winning any real races.
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That’s like a 330W FTP. To be honest, I don’t think that would be too crazy for a female pro.
Wikipedia has her weight at 61kg, so 5.4W/kg.
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Peloton states that their bikes are rated at +/- 10%
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From what I’ve heard, their claimed accuracy would be optimistic. 
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It’s sorta all-of-the-above in terms of accuracy. There’s no actual PM, to be clear. Peloton does state 10% from the factory, but that has no bearing on individual bikes; it’s well known that the variance among bikes is huge. Sadly, it’s not even useful to put power pedals on A bike, because that has no bearing on any other bikes.
If it’s a real 330FTP, time to become a world-tour pro.
It’s almost certainly not accurate. Here’s a CyclingTips article discussing female pros, and includes a rider won a 16km time trial:
Amber Neben won the La Route de France Feminine Internationale in 2016, a win that was set up by a strong ride in the stage 4, 16.4km individual time trial. The course was pancake flat, which doesn’t suit the 51kg Neben, but she managed to produce the winning time by averaging an incredible 293W (5.8 W/kg) for 18:07.
This puts Nebens power-to-weight ratio literally off the charts and shows why the then-41-year-old was able to become the individual time trial world champion later that year
Google tells me Quigley weighs about 60kg. So… it’s probably not an impossible FTP, but if it’s real, she’s legitimately on the very very good end of world tour pros. It’s unlikely she just ‘stumbled into that’ fitness even with her running background. But yeah, if true, would be pretty incredible. She’s clearly very strong aerobically.
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She’s the equivalent of a world tour pro in the running world, is she not? Why would it be strange that she also had that power on the bike?
Also there’s more to being a WT rider than just a high 20-min power. A lot more people have that power than could be WT pros.
Obviously.
Because they’re different sports? No one’s implying she’s not a very strong cyclist or that she doesn’t have a supremely strong aerobic engine. But call me skeptical that a non-cyclist on an infamously incorrect machine with a stated power accuracy of 10% just put out a time-trial winning 20mins while also hosting a live stream.
EDIT to add: Ultimately, unless she repeats it on a proper power meter, it’s nigh on useless to debate it, really. None of us actually know, and it’s all just opinion over what’s likely. I’ve got nothing against her, she seems like a badass. She’s probably got a higher actual FTP than I do, almost certainly. I just personally doubt it’s that high.
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I’m not doubting the power measurement is likely inaccurate. Lets say it’s 10%, so a 300W FTP. Is that really that strange for a top female athlete? Why would a couple watts more make it extraordinary? She isn’t that small, 5’9 and 60kg (I’d guess a bit heavier now because the 60kg will be her racing weight).
A male WT pro at that weight would be expected to have about 30% more power.
As a ballpark figure, it seems about right to me.
Phil Gaimon, a 400w+ (6w/kg) rider, won a Socal crit a few years ago, solo lapping the field containing Rahsaan Bahati, as documented in Phil’s book, Draft Animals. Bahati, a local legend in his own right, jokingly told Phil after the race to go back to racing in Europe.
Phil spent the peak of his Worldtour career fetching bottles and Clif Z-bars for the likes of Andrew Talansky and Tom Danielson on team Garmin (later merged/renamed to team Cannondale). He never raced a GT and only rode half of a Paris-Roubaix.
A 10% bump and Phil would have been fighting for the top step of the Tour de France podium.
P.S. Check out Phil’s books. Really good reading. I listen to the audio versions while riding.
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Correct. Unlike the Stages bike, which uses a variation of the typical Stages crank-based strain gauge, the Peleton takes the magnetic resistance and cadence and simply performs the math.
Magnetic resistance is extremely sensitive to manufacturing tolerances, as magnetic force is inversely proportion to the square of the gap between the magnets and the flywheel. What this basically means is that as resistance goes up, error goes up along with it.
While it’s totally possible to have an accurate system using this method, the reality is that the Peleton bike simply isn’t made to the same tolerances as say, a Tacx Neo. I’m not exactly sure how direct drive smart trainers work (that’s part of each manufacturer’s secret sauce), but it could be combination of tighter tolerances and some sort of feedback mechanism. My understanding is that trainers like the Neo, which don’t require spin down calibration, don’t have strain gauges in them, and yet they build one of the most accurate trainers on the market. Somehow they’ve figured it out.
Those maths unfortunately don’t work. A quoted accuracy of +/- 10% means that for an unquoted percentage of units, under unspecified conditions, the power measured will be with +/- 10% of the real power. That does not mean that the max error of a single unit cannot be more than 10% in a given set of conditions.
PGA golfer rolled in with a crispy 4.8 W/kg. I think I need to replace my trainer with a Peloton.
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Wait wait, wait a second
ESPN and Peloton have combined to bring celebrities and athletes together for an epic, all-out, 20-minute Peloton race.
…this was a competitive FTP test? And the winner was the highest watts, not the highest W/kg? COULD WE GET A EURO OVER HERE TO FIX ESPN PLEASE
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Peloton gives you a total output score for the ride, which accumulated over the duration of the ride. Their scores were the overall score for the ride, and not average watts for the entire ride. They didn’t publish the average watts, but watching the contest I think she was in the 270 range, which is still awesome.