bobonker

qft

Sonny

bt

as long as it takes.

spdntrxi

according to my strava acct.. 32 seconds.. I'm sure I can go a little longer, but never really tried.

chaadster

Oh, I was looking at my critical power curve set to show the last 6 weeks when I said 15secs; looking back at 2014, it looks like it's about 25sec, so that's a little better. Still, with a deliberate effort, I could probably move that metric up a fair bit.

spdntrxi

~2300w.. damn I'm sure you could hold it for more the 25s as well.

chaadster

Ha! That decisive 1 sec of crushing 2300w?! It's probably more to do with me being, um, "big boned" than my athletic prowess.

Darth Steele

hmmm... I think that converting that to Watts/per kg is a better way of going about this..

some big guys put out some big #s on the flats, where are smaller guys would find it more difficult to put out those #s

look at it this way... a 90kg lad generating 400watts is around 4.5 watts/kg. Where as a 60kg guy would have to generate like 6.7 watts/kg


total watts doesn't tell you much

carpediemracing 

This is a regional wind tunnel type place. I changed the order so it goes low-> high watts.

210w. 23.2 mph. Taller guy.
262w. 25.1 mph. Mid size but doesn't look light.
270w. 25.4 mph. Mid size.
278w. 26.8 mph. Smaller guy.
369w. 29.6 mph. Really tall guy, happens to hold the US hour record on the track according to the site.

If you look weight has nothing to do with the (flat land steady state) speed, except I suppose if the rider is so big that they have more drag. What's more significant is height. The guy at 278w is noticeably smaller/shorter than the one at 270w, and has much more speed for his +8 watts if you look at the 270w guy. This is compared to the 262->270 difference (1.4 mph vs 0.3 mph).

What's amazing is that the really tall guy has virtually the same aero drag as the smaller guy, .220 vs .224.

chaadster

The question was straightforward: how long can you hold 600w?

The answer is more complex...

...but is nothing to do with W/kg.

I don't disagree that W/kg is more instructive from a comparative cycling performance perspective, but it's a totally different question, and asking how long someone can hold a given wattage is a legitimate line of inquiry (insofar as it is answerable) even if, perhaps, completely academic.

colnago62

We can't tell if weight is not a factor based on that website because it doesn't give weights for the riders. We have nothing to compare.

My understanding, based on information in the book Hi Tech Cycling, the frontal area of people with similar height is about the same and that frontal area has the largest effect on drag. Large heavily muscled riders and skinny lightly muscled riders have close to the same drag coefficient. This is why larger riders tend to have an advantage when the terrain is flat.

Dunbar

I don't think I've ever seen anyone but track sprinters crack 2000w.

To answer the OP I can do 600w for 25s. But I don't train my short term power so I'm sure I have room to improve.

hamster

According to my GC records, I held 600w for 37 seconds once in 2014 and for 42 seconds once in 2013. I spend very little time doing sprint training, but I hit the weights every once in a while and I supposedly have unusually big calves for a person of my size (which is in agreement with my username). The 2013 effort resulted in a KOM on a Strava segment with ~25 other people that held till about a month ago (and even then it fell mainly because our local road construction crews razed the original road on which the KOM was achieved, and paved a new road right next to it but with less elevation gain.)

beatlebee 

And this is why strava Watts are meaningless. (99% of the time)

chaadster

I have no idea if it's accurate or not; I don't usually see the numbers crack 1000w when training, and I rarely ride-- and never race-- with power, so I really have little idea of where the numbers go when I'm really gettin' after it.

Looking at that curve, though, the 2.3k W is probably a data outlier, as it's not even a curve from 1600w up, but a straight line. It's likely just a misreading.

GENESTARWIND

https://hsto.org/getpro/habr/comment_images/ef6/71e/fbe/ef671efbe352cd876a15e35336018c1f.gif

chaadster

What are you talking about? Those are Powertap watts. It says right on it that Strava CP curve is only available with powermeter data.

Get it right, man.

gregf83 

If you rarely ride with a power meter those are likely just Strava estimated power numbers which are meaningless for short durations.

chaadster

Either you know something the rest of don't, or you're just not too bright.

I'll say AGAIN what is written right on the chart, that the Strava CP curve is only available to those with powermeter data.

Are you asserting that Strava uses estimated power for generating the CP curve, and if so, what is your basis for making that claim? I haven't dug into the Strava help pages for specifics because it seems pretty clear that they use powermeter data for that, otherwise why would they restrict the curve to PM users? What would be the point of replacing or mixing in estimated power?

I've got to allow that may be the case, but I strongly suspect that neither you nor robabeatle know what you're talking about.

achoo

That's probably quite accurate, although there is a good chance the 2300W one-second reading is a fluke - generally if you can hold a certain power level for one second, you can hold pretty close to that for maybe up to 10 seconds, depending on the rider. No rider drops off a cliff like that after two pedal strokes, no matter what power level he produces. If that one-second value is a fluke it's also hiding true averages out to about 5 seconds.

The 1300W "knee" at 10 sec is the important bit on the graph with respect to short-term power.

Vicegrip

Agree. i am a 180 lb 6 foot 1 50 something that is meat and bone fit and rides a lot of miles and 6 to 7 days a week. My year 2014 power curve has 600 watts at 45 seconds. I bet I could plan to and beat 60 seconds if I wanted to do a warm up, crank to blowup and go into limp mode. I suspect that much more than 70 seconds would be off the chart blow up and puke zone and useless for any real riding or racing other than to see if I could do it.

gregf83 

The chart just says it's only available to powermeter users which you are.

For anyone that's been riding with power for a while your chart looks odd. The CP curves generally look much smoother. There are a couple of possible explanations. One is that the data set is limited which is consistent with your statement that you rarely ride with power. The other is that Strava is not providing accurate data. This is also not an unreasonable assumption as they still have a few bugs in their software and I don't believe many people using power on a regular basis rely solely on Strava's power tools so it may still have some problems.

In any case, it's very simple to clear this up by just posting the segment of your ride that generated the high numbers. It's usually fairly clear from the context (speed and HR) whether the power looks reasonable. I don't use Strava for looking at power data but I have about 5 yrs worth of power data on Golden Cheetah. I occasionally get odd looking data on the CP chart have to go back and edit some data on a particular ride because the powermeter was providing inaccurate data inconsistent with the ride I was on. I don't generally sprint very often outside of racing so it's usually pretty easy to find the sprint points and see if the data makes sense.

chaadster

With respect to "the cliff," it depends on what the objective is. I've never made a a maximal effort to sustain peak power.

colnago62

Producing 2,000 watts is in elite rider territory. I read Chipolini produced about 1,800 watts in his sprints. Nothstein I read did about 2,300 watts.

chaadster

That's what I thought; you have no legitimate basis to claim the CP curve is "likely just Strava estimated power numbers." What's most likely is that you're dead wrong.

And now my CP looks odd and not smooth? Whatever, dude. Any fool with 10 secs to Google can see you're full of crap on that claim.

The best part, though, is that you're going to verify power by correlating speed and HR! BWAAAHAHAHA!

Really, man, get a grip of yourself!

gregf83 

Just post your ride data.

Edit: Here are some more typical curve courtesy of google: