caloso

OP:

What exactly do you mean by "cruise speed?" Do you mean the speed you can maintain for 5 minutes? 20 minutes? An hour?

torque cyclist

yeah i'm nowhere near lean at the moment. i'm not sure how lean i'm going to get. I plan on doing some powerlifting, pro cyclist is not the body build that i'm after. i'm looking to be strong all over.


speed that I can maintain for at least an hour.

caloso

Good. Cyclists who train with power refer to that as their functional threshold power. I had good 1' and 5' power but I wasn't able to use it effectively to help my teammates at the end of a race because I had a low FTP. One of the most effective ways to increase FTP is with long intervals. I had real success with 2x20' intervals. Since you don't have a PM, you're going to have to go on perceived effort or feel. The best way I would describe the right effort for 20' intervals is that it has to be heavy and slightly uncomfortable but not so uncomfortable that you can't finish the 20'. Then spin easy for 5' and do it again.

If you have a hill that takes you 30' to climb without stops, that might be a good place to do these.

torque cyclist

you say heavy and slightly uncomfortable, so what cadence is that, normal (for most cyclist) 80-100 or is it lower? At the current time my gears 48x14 on 26" don't feel that heavy at lower cadence, and that's the highest gear I have. if I wanted to feel the stress on the legs, I would have to climb hills.

caloso

I just looked at my last few sets of 2x20's and I tend to do them at 80-85 rpm, but I am focusing on a target wattage rather than cadence. Ideally I would do them at 90-95.

But 48x14 is a plenty big gear. 80 rpm on 26"x 1.5" tires is roughly 20mph.

superslomo

"Training with power" or whatnot is part of an actual planned training process. It's way over MY head, not that that says all that much here. You are riding a bicycle, you aren't "training" in the sense that is implied by the above.

Put a few hundred miles into your legs and your other parts, and then see what you're up to, see what just strengthens itself on its own. I'm returning to riding more from a longer hiatus (a few years of long commutes and parenthood, adult beverages in the evening and laziness), and I'm just worrying at the moment about putting in the miles and the time, and once I've gotten the endurance up I'm going to worry at that point about working on specifics with intervals etc.

If anything, try and concentrate on getting out of your comfort zone... work on slightly increasing your cadence, pushing what feels like it's not fun, whether that's 'torque' or cadence is irrelevant, as long as you are doing what is hard for you, you're getting stronger in the weak places.

Note also that every. single. person. who starts one of these threads talks about how they are "efficient" or "comfortable" at a low cadence, and they might be right, but time generally proves that you can learn to spin quicker... faster spin means more speed without requiring as much pure strength, leveraging your heart and lungs instead of your pure muscle mass.

localroutes

Low cadence works fine, but you do have to push a pretty significant gear to get to your desired speed. I found that it was best to build power by churning uphill in a tough gear(on my road bike that equates to pushing a 53/17,19 up a 3 mile climb that has a 5-6% grade). Basically I do a ride that has numerous climbs of varied length and steepness and keep it in my big ring. I found that staying in the saddle at all times was not comfortable but was most effective at building power. Once the power is there you can now rider an easier gear at a higher RPM and the speed will be there. I think it best to start this kind of training gradually as it is tough on the whole body(knees, back)and you need to figure out whether this type of force is compatible with your body's tolerances. It is certainly not for every body. Hope this helps.
localroute

torque cyclist

It made me wonder, because i'm going for a body type with lots of muscle mass anyways. i'm looking to do bench press and all that along with my cycling. I find it hard sticking to the higher cadence because I don't like the feeling of cardio exhaustion, and am much more used to muscle aches

caloso

If you figure out a way to double your FTP with only muscle pain, I hope you'll publish your findings.

IronHorseRiderX

OP - you are seriously overthinking this whole power thing.
Assuming you have strava-supported phone or any other strava compatible device and weighted accurately yourself and bicycle (separately) all you need to do is to find long enough (let's say 4-5miles) preferably steady (3% to 6% avg grade) climb and hit it with all you got.
Upload your ride to the strava and it will tell you how much power you generated on average for that climb.
It's that easy and take an hour or so do (20 min warmup and 20 to 40min actual climb).
Strava is quite accurate, possible many times more accurate than you theoretical calculations.
Once you established your baseline you can try same climb with different cadences and see what works the best for you.
There's number of very fast guys riding 70rpm or less all the time including some steep >5% grade & long climbs and still very fast and competitive so it all depends what works for you.

torque cyclist

i'm going to do all sorts of training in this regard. high cadence low force, high force low cadence and combinations in between. I want to be a very flexible cyclist going from speed/ road to off-road and utility. doing both is probably good for all cyclists, I will try everything personally and share my results.

IronHorseRiderX

Going from 120W or even 170W FTP to over 300 is nothing short of epic.
It's book-worthy material, no less.
Assuming you will get to 170lbs or perhaps 160lbs (72kg) it will be around 4W/kg which falls into Cat 2 category Just How Good Are These Guys? | CyclingTips
I'm not sure how accurate those numbers / categories are but looking at strava it appears that there's very very few who can do 4W/kg or more and all of them have years and years of training.

IronHorseRiderX

OP, you might find this entertaining What FTP can be expected from the average Joe? (Page 2): Triathlon Forum: Slowtwitch Forums - some practical insight into that 4W/kg thing.
I would suggest to read all posts by Andrew Coggan in that thread, it should inspire you.

achoo

I really want to read your posts after you do 2x20 in 48x14 at 16+ mph - with NO breaks in either 20-minute interval. You don't stop pedaling, you don't even let up in how hard you're pedaling - at all.

60 rpm in 48x14 with 26" wheels is 16 mph or so: Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Gear Calculator

pdedes

OP's entertaining, but he's a short fat guy riding a tank and not interested in the helpful information.

hamster

It's even worse than that.

Per your second link 4 W/kg is about where an average _lean_ person can get realistically. Yes, 300 W at 160 lbs is 4 W/kg. But it does not mean that this guy can get to 300 W. That's because excess weight does not translate into extra wattage. The guy is 5'5", which means that his lean/skinny weight is about 130 lbs, and he can get to 130 * 0.454 * 4 = 236 W with training. For him 300 W is 5.1 W/kg.

Plus, the whole discussion is extremely vague, since he has no measuring equipment and his best estimate of his FTP is "120 to 170 W". That is about as precise as saying "I think I can bench press somewhere between 100 and 200 lbs".

torque cyclist

well 4W/kg might be a great thought. but as speed goes up the power to weight is going to drop in significance right? I mean at that point aero is going to be the more important thing. from what was posted, he averaged 245 watts with a max over 20 mins of 361 watts.

challenge accepted. will attempt the next time I go onto the bike path.

do you do any sort of weight training outside of legs and bikes? or did you just optimize yourself for just cycling? I ride a tank, and enjoy the challenge. plus it rides like a Lincoln.

pdedes

in my racing days, i would do a 12 week winter training regime that included some heavy lifting twice a week, in addition to running, plyometrics, indoor soccer and volleyball. because i not only competed in road races, but also contested events on the track, i required significant core and upper body strength. But none of my muscles have ever been for show, only for go. my massage therapist remarks that her job is easiest on bodybuilders because their muscle tissue has the consistency of candy floss. My muscles are dense because they are all used every day whether at work or play.

fstshrk

^^^^

This. Without a power meter, all of this discussion is pointless.

torque cyclist

there are estimations on the required power to go a certain speed. how accurate are bike mounted power meters, and what units of power do they display?

LMaster

Being an ignornat newbie, can you get any sort of a mediocre approximation (say within 10%) by using climbing speed on a decent gradient and calm day and then using one of the watt calculators?

BigJeff

Lol... Nice.

Don't worry cyclists never miss leg day.

hamster

Yes, that's the best you can do without a PM. I think you can get within 10 watt under good conditions.

LMaster

What grade do you think is ideal for that?

I guess once I get out and buy a road bike I'll have to do an actual test but so far all I have is a 2x20 @ 304W avg...from a random gym trainer so god knows where that accuracy could be or what "power" is even being measured, and a 4.6M climb @ 12.8mph w/average grade of 3.9%...but on a MTB that weighs 35lbs.

I like the idea of training with a powermeter, especially since I'm a numbers geek...but those price tags are brutal. Even stages at 699-799 is asking a lot for where I am now TT

hamster

Over 5%, ideally something like 7%. The problem is that under 5% measurements are still badly affected by aerodynamics and much over 7% many people start running out of gears.