Fat Boy

I'd say a teenager is going to see a hell of a lot more adaptation that those of us with gray (at best) hair.

Racer Ex 

It's not the number. It's when.

A 1500w sprint is mediocre if your a track sprinter. It's a 500w sprint if you're in a 2 man break with me for 20 miles if you're a 280 guy at 20m. It's a 1000w sprint at the end of a 90 minute 1/2 crit and that's if you're still there.

It will fool you into thinking you're a "real" sprinter through whatever the Russian equivilent of a Cat 3 is. Then you will be torn to bits if you haven't worked on other skills and some plan "B" tactics.

Start from ground zero and you'll see a pretty close curve actually, and in many cases you'll see better adaptation (by %) with older folks. Absolute numbers will favor the kids but in some of the cases I've seen (and my own history), them old folks can get rolling.

mattm

Get WKO, it will rank your power.

But like others have said, power isn't everything - just look at cat 3/4's with big power #'s, and 1/2's with smaller #'s.. tactics matter a lot.

gsteinb

Peak power is a pretty silly metric. I recently had a guy argue with me about what my peak power number was because he had a bigger number (similar weight, actually) in a sprint I beat (crushed, actually) him in.

Duuuude, what number do you hit. It must be like 1300.

LOL, I've never even come close to that.

Come on...I hit that. You have to have


Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But if he did he hit it behind me and if one looks at the more reasonable aspects of the sprint (acceleration, 10 and 20 second power - plus where we were respectively on the last two laps - and that he was behind me when I jumped) the story becomes a bit clearer.

ovoleg

okay so half of this thread is giving some legit advice and half of the thread thinks i was bragging about my peak power or something.

I dont care what my peak power is, I'm just here because I need advice and guidance on where you guys think I should focus more. I don't go out and sprint everyday lol, I just have massive quads/hams genetically and I've just been decent at sprinting. I can continuously put out 1100 5s power(even when ultra tired) from the tests I've done but it doesn't mean crap if I dont have the endurance to get to the sprint(which I don't think I do).

Was going to focus on threshhold work in the coming weeks, what do you guys think as far as an interval day. Terrible 20's or that Pyramid thing? Should I do a 2 hour ride and try to stay at 80% of treshhold?

Thanks again guys

shovelhd

You should go back and read your original post again. Do you really think that sounds like you were asking for advice? It sure didn't to me. That's why I stayed out of it until now. Ewang contests irritate me.

I would work on recovery after efforts and FTP. And don't underestimate what 2 hours at tempo will do to you. It's a beeeatch.

johnybutts

And boring =(

globecanvas

****

MDcatV

what exactly is Coppan's book?

Creatre

Meh.

rkwaki

Ouch...

Scummer

Your numbers suck if you don't know how to properly race in a pack.
I just posted my highest power power numbers on Saturday on was blown out the back in less than 5 minutes in a cat 4 race.

That just tells you how bad of a bike racer I really am.

But if you like to see numbers and how little they mean for a race. Of course, it didn't help that they called out primes for the first 2 laps either.
First 5 minutes of the race (my fat ass clocks in at 180lbs, not that far off from the 172lbs you posted)

Peak 5min (297 watts):
Duration: 5:00 (9:58)
Distance: 1.756 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 867 297 watts
Heart Rate: 98 164 157 bpm
Cadence: 16 112 88 rpm
Speed: 11 28.3 21.1 mph

botto 

jsutkeepspining

Create, do me next!!!!! ibt "twss" comments

shovelhd

Well if you're not riding with power I could see how they would be. It's mentally exhausting trying to stick to target power for that long.

waterrockets 

That's actually really useful though. Translation: learn to sprint in races, learn how to test 1' power, train threshold.

rkwaki

Mine puts me at "untrained"

Racer Ex 

This.

Also understand power numbers need to be tested with a tight protocol much past a minute to be relevant, unless you're doing TT's.

MDcatV

i dont think it is. do an acceleration every 3 to 5 minutes, or do 3' at > ftp and 2' <ftp, or something to keep it interesting. those are some of my favorite workouts. if i'm stuck on rollers on a weekend day during winter, i usually do one of those variations and it goes by like a shot.

ovoleg

So what do you guys recommend a good workout for treshold work. The pyramid or the tempo for 1 hour? Also how many times a week would you recommend doing it...1-2 days? Should I maybe just start off by doing tempo for 30min then recover for 10 then another 30mins then recover for another 10?

shovelhd

I am not mentally strong enough to do 2 hours of tempo on the trainer without doing some sort of "sprint" to break it up. It's not so much the boredom but the constant load on the legs.

ovoleg

For the 1min power I took that off of a climb that I went really hard for 2'ish mins. I just took the garmin connect file and did 1min max. Should I try to do this on the flats instead?

jsutkeepspining

easy plan for you to follow in the coming weeks if you aint racing

monday: hour easy
tueday: 5x5's 110-120% of ftp
wednesday 6x5x1 at 105-108% or 2x20's at 95-100%
thursday: 3 hours at .7 IF
friday hour easy
saturday: 3 hours w/ 2x20's at sst at the end of the ride
sunday: 4 hours z2

enjoy

jsutkeepspining

test maximal efforts for a specific time frame. if i want to see my max 1 minute i go ahrd for 1 mintue, not 2. you lost a lot of power because u have to hold back a bit.

shovelhd

"Tight protocol" means, among other things:

Repeatable course
Same time of day
Similar atmospheric conditions
Precise warmup and test cycle

Grabbing junk off of Strava is just that, junk.