Moving this conversation to a relevant place:
OnTheRivet wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:54 am
"I was probably around 4.8/4.9wpk FTP"
And this is the issue. Guessing is not the same as doing an FTP test. If you were making those numbers you could literally head out to ANY road race in the US and be a player in the Pro 1-2 field.
I have friends who coach and I know what it takes to win a Masters National road race title (they have coached them) and apparently there are potential National champions all over this forum, it's amazing.
TobinHatesYou wrote:
RyanH was legitimately around 4.9w/kg in 2018-2019, IIRC. As was I at the end of 2020, but I had to get down to 60kg to do it.
You must be a heavier dude, because yes someone who is 80kg and 5.0w/kg is pretty beastly. He’d still likely lose Berkeley Hills, Pescadero, Mt. Hamilton, etc. Someone 70-75kg with 5.0w/kg would be at the pointy end of any flat or rolling RR. Someone 60kg and 5w/kg would pack finish a flat RR and be hanging on for dear life in a rolling RR…and dropped on any RR with real climbs.
And by coincidence, someone who is ~81kg with a 400W FT rode 60mi to Alviso today, won it, and rode 60mi home. He is a cat 3 on the road (because he just started racing road this year.)
Also FTP doesn’t mean what you probably think it means. In technical terms it’s riding at MLSS to TTE. TTE could be 70min…it could be 35min.
@OnTheRivet Here's the thing, when you aren't doing formal training anymore but have for 7 seasons prior, you get pretty good at estimating where you are based on certain performances. This isn't a best example of where I was but I'm not going to spend an hour digging through my ride history to prove a point. In the below ride, I did a flat TT, had to dismount the bike early climb to get around a gate and navigate a slightly sketchy downhill section and I still averaged 342w for almost 19 minutes with the last 13 being at 350 avg:
https://strava.app.link/AccquBaRrlb
I also did a hill climb club race that year and we averaged a tad over 350w for part of the 21 min climb but since it was a race, it wasn't all out. I was still talking doing that effort. I need to double check the file but I recall I ramped it up to what I felt was closer to threshold and we were doing mid 360s for awhile before my team mate told me to pull back.
I know these numbers seem wild to you but they're relatively pedestrian in California where people train and ride all year around. Don't get me wrong, when I was hitting those numbers I used to smash the group rides but put me in a race and it was a whole other story. FTP isn't race success.
Hell, FTP doesn't mean much on its own at all. Take my riding indoors for the last two years, I was riding around 4 to 5 hours a week and my FTP was around 4.5 to 4.6 but put me on a 60 mile group ride and I was useless. These are SRM recorded numbers I was hitting on minimal hours (Tobin made my numbers look like child's play):