RockyMtnMerlin

I see some discussion here from time to time about watt output. Thought you might find this from cyclingnews.com interesting.

"Power output is all-important for cyclists, and Boonen is impressive in this department. "We give all our riders the same test," said Hespel. "They start to pedal at 100 Watts, which is easy for them. Every eight minutes, it increases by 40 Watts. Tom can do it up to 460 Watts after an hour and a half. That means that he has ridden for eight minutes at 420 Watts before that, and eight minutes at 380 Watts before that. You should try that one time on your home trainer. We've never seen that here. Museeuw was a fantastic athlete, but on a pure physical level, Tom is a bigger talent."

When Boonen gives it full gas in a sprint, he can put out 1600 Watts at 110 rpm. That's typical of a top road sprinter, of which there are very few in the world. "That's huge. Because of that, he has broken several frames. Remember the stage in the Tour de France where his chain came off his cog? That's not magic."

Now that's power.

56/12 and 22/28

That's nothing, Cipo could do up to 1900 watts in his day.

***Butch***

Do you have the link to that story handy?

RockyMtnMerlin

It is here.. Guess I was a little too impressed with Boonen's out put. I just read that Mary Nothstein was measured once in a race at 2200 watts. In any case, those guys are strong!

Laggard

So Cipo could put out 300 more watts. Big deal. He still couldn't begin to match Boonens overall output.

***Butch***

Thanks!

RockyMtnMerlin

OOPs, too late at night. Sorry Marty!

2Rodies

Yeah on top of that Cippo really suffered from Mountain-itis. Boonen is real green jersey contender, a classics rider and possibly a 1 week tour winner. Cippo had a massive sprint but he was a one trick pony while Booned is throwback, a real allrounder!

timmhaan

boonen is smart too. remember the end of the 2005 PR, when it was basically him and hincapie? boonen totally controlled the end of that race and no matter what hincapie did, boonen had a better counter move. and of course when it came to the sprint, boonen had it easy.

kleinpro

Cippo also had a train the last few hundred meters, Boonen does it all by himself.

jmp66

just for comparison, anyone know what the max wattage is for the average cat 3 or 4?

Warblade

It totally depends. I'm Cat 3 and I put out almost 1000 watts. Could you give us a little more info on the Cat 3/4 rider?

2Rodies

Max wattage? Sustained wattage? I'm a C4 this year and my max this year was 1290w. I'm just finishing up my last base stage and durring corner sprint drills I was averaging high 900w. My CP30 (ave watts for 30min) over the summer when I was at a mini-peak was 297w, CP60 was 234w. I have a team mate who is also moving to 4's this year and right now he is producing 1250 and he hasn't even started build phase yet.

I'm not great sprinter but I'm guessing that my cp.2 value will be in 1200 range and my cp1 will be in the 950-1000 range once I get through my last build stage.

oboeguy

...which has absolutely nothing to do with wattage.

I'm reading a book on cycling science that has a graph of wattages. There's a point on the graph of some dude who was measured at over 2000W!

BTW, IIRC, Lance's "sustainable" wattage is like 470+ as computed by Dr. Ferrari. The doc would have him ride this 1km 10% climb at different wattages, prick his finger to get a blood lactate reading, and then some kind of data fit to compute the sustainable wattage (presumably a linear least squares fit or something like that). I read this in either "23 Days in July" or "Lance Armstrong's War". I can't remember which because I read them one after the other.

bashy-smashy

I read that in Lance Armstrong's War too, pretty good book. I've never tested my peak wattage, but now I'm curious to know. How did you guys test yours? Lab? Powertap?

Squint

How much do you weigh? 950-1000W for 1 min is huge. If you're not that big you might be able to break the kilo world record with that kind of power.

RockyMtnMerlin

See my post above about about Nothstein. 2200 watts!!

2Rodies

Sorry my bad that should have been my cp5s (5second) my cp1 is currently 490w should be around 530-550w by my peak.

Warblade

Phew! For a minute there I thought you might have been Magnus Backstedt!!!

Phatman

haha, I put out 1420 watts last season for a max. the thing is though, I suck at bunch sprints, I'm always in the wrong spot, or I tire myself out trying to get a good spot. I suppose I'm like a cippolini or petacci of the cat 4s...without a leadout. I focused on TTs last year becuase of this.

I had a layoff this summer and fall due to a brutal broken wrist/hard job combo, and I gained 20 pounds and lost wattage, down to 1282 max and ~250 LT. I'm 193# now, otherwise, I'd try to get my sprinting wattage up by lifting weights. otherwise, I think I could acheive 1600 watts.

2Rodies

We just did a sprint clinic with the number one ranked rider in Texas. He said over and over that there are several guys out there that produce way more power than him but he wins with his head. He said position is more important than power and his results seem to bear that that out. I'm like you I don't have race winning sprint in and of itself. I'm hoping to use what he taught us to be smarter at the end and get results that way.

PolishPostal

Any chance you could share some of what you learned? My spring tactics could use all the help that they could get.

Thanks.