Just did a 30 min TT last week outside on the road bike with my new powertap. This was my first TT using power. I averaged 200watts for 30 minutes/157 HR. This seems weak, no? In my defense, I'm out of shape and just started base.
I finished off my season well in sport and am going to expert so just curious about what numbers others like me (I'm 39) are hitting right now. I don't really have anything to compare at this point.
You are weak and should rightly be ashamed of those numbers!
But really, What Strat said. Check your preferences in the Power Agent and if you have the time, give the CycleOps help desk a call. They're really good at making sure you get the most from their product.
Authorities speculate that speed may have been a factor. They are also holding gravity and inertia for questioning.
My power for a 30 min TT?
No idea, and I don't know if your number is good or bad . But! Remember mountain bike racing is about more than just power or power/weight ratio; there is also a skill and handling component, so don't get too hung up on numbers.
Oh yeah, one more thing, those guys in Cat 1 that say they are such roadies and suck at the technical stuff are lying.
I'm about 165 right now. I did 4X15 minute OU intervals of ~250W pushing pretty good last week (outside on roads with longer constant grades; up and down). With practice, my downhill power has gotten a lot better. 200W is my tempo target when I'm fresh.
But then again, in early December, ~200W was my threshold when not riding for a month after a broken wrist. And I was 172. I struggled to push 130W for a hour on the trainer.
BTW, I train at elevation. One week I trained in Vegas...... man, what a great instant power boost!!!
Last edited by Poncharelli; 02-01-2012 at 08:16 AM.
Sounds like something is off on the PT or software. Unless you're about 100#?
Edit: was it rolling terrain or did it include any stops? If so you may want to check out the normalized power instead of average?
It was cold and I had full winter gear on and I'm out of shape so I think I'm just weak right now although it does sound low-I won my division in sport last season. I cant find normalized power on the power agent 7.
I did have 2 roll through stop signs and it was a bit hilly.
I should try and upgrade the software or do a reboot of the cpu to make sure power is accurate.
Yeah....what everyone else said. Be very careful looking at raw wattages. The top of my endurance zone power is right at 215W. At my weight, I can hardly climb a mole hill at that power. For reference, my last 20min TT effort was right at 350W (rolling terrain...but no stops). I think I could possibly do 15-20W faster on a completely flat course, or better yet, a 2% incline course.
Yeah....what everyone else said. Be very careful looking at raw wattages. The top of my endurance zone power is right at 215W. At my weight, I can hardly climb a mole hill at that power. For reference, my last 20min TT effort was right at 350W (rolling terrain...but no stops). I think I could possibly do 15-20W faster on a completely flat course, or better yet, a 2% incline course.
I think your zones aren't set quite right, if that's your best average power for a 20 minute TT... 243 watts or so should be the top of your endurance zone (zone 2).
Sounds like you are out of shape. Numbers move quickly when you are out of shape, so don't worry. But make sure you start training.
This. I wouldn't put too much stock in this # if you're untrained. If you're embarking on a training plan that involves a conventional base building period at first, then you'll be doing zone 2 and zone 3 type riding, where you can let RPE be your guide rather than wattage test #s.
A more meaningful test value would be to do the test following a 'rest' / 'recovery' week following your first month of building up.
What head unit are you using with your Powertap? When you connect the head unit to your computer copy and paste a copy of the original ride file into a folder on your computer so that it's available later. You can then put the same file into several different programs to see which you prefer.
The software that you use to look at your files makes quite a big difference to how useful the power meter data is. I'd suggest that you use Golden Cheetah 3.0 (beta development version) or WKO+ 3.0 in preference to CycleOps Poweragent.
The newest version of Golden Cheetah 3.0 (beta development version) looks really good. It's also free. The latest version includes Normalized Power, TSS and IF metrics, along with a calendar, GPS map of your route where you can read off power readings for sections on the map, best interval power outputs for individual sections etc.
I was trying it out now and it's much better than the previous Golden Cheetah 2.0. (hold down shift and left mouse drag on the ride screen to zoom in and out, hold left mouse and drag to create a new interval selection which you can then edit or delete from the intervals tab on the left hand side.) You have to spend a little time in Tools - Options choosing what you want displayed (NP, TSS, IF, w/kg need adding to the Summary Metrics and Interval Metrics displays manually). You still can't change the scales of individual traces though which is a major drawback.
WKO+ 3.0 costs money but is useful for looking closely at your files and working with the data. The graph section is still more versatile than Golden Cheetah. The downside of WKO+ 3.0 is that it hasn't been updated in well over a year and a lot of the report sections aren't great. It's been neglected in favour of the online Training Peaks website which is a shame. Despite that it's widely used and quite useful. You get a free trial so you can download it to have a look.
Just did a 30 min TT last week outside on the road bike with my new powertap. This was my first TT using power. I averaged 200watts for 30 minutes/157 HR. This seems weak, no? In my defense, I'm out of shape and just started base.
I finished off my season well in sport and am going to expert so just curious about what numbers others like me (I'm 39) are hitting right now. I don't really have anything to compare at this point.
Another way to compare your data with other people would be to upload some of your power files to Strava.com. You'll need a GPS enabled head unit for that but then it allows you to see what times other people did for the same sections of route. Bear in mind that power on Strava is only a rough estimate unless there's a small lightning icon next to the power numbers. That's a sign that the data is from a power meter.
I think your zones aren't set quite right, if that's your best average power for a 20 minute TT... 243 watts or so should be the top of your endurance zone (zone 2).
Yes, I am actually going for retesting this week. The endurance number was set about 2.5 months ago. I had been off the bike entirely for about 4.5 months and then only back on the bike for a week or two when I did that first test.
I feel like my real endurance pace should be around 240-250W. At 215W I literally don't even work up a sweat.
I can do about 300 an hour so probably around 600 for 30 minutes
Different people have different strengths so there isn't really a set rule that applies to everyone. When you get past the very shortest durations the power outputs tend to become closer together. With an FTP of 300 watts you'd maybe be looking at a estimated best of around 315 watts for 30 minutes. You should be able to read the actual figures off from your power data. In WKO+3.0 you can set a graph to show your best power outputs at different durations to see how they change over time.
The graph below shows my best power outputs from 2011. It's a shortened graph to make it a bit clearer without as many different durations as I normally have visible. The best power outputs are fairly closely grouped and my trend is very much the other way. I'm not great at shorter durations but then there isn't that much drop off in power outputs over longer periods. 180 and 240 minutes are lower but still in the same sort of area also.
Pictured below: My best power outputs from 2011. Estimated weight of 149lbs/ 67.59kg for the w/kg figures but I was lighter than that for some of the year. Edit: Fixed typo
This. I wouldn't put too much stock in this # if you're untrained. If you're embarking on a training plan that involves a conventional base building period at first, then you'll be doing zone 2 and zone 3 type riding, where you can let RPE be your guide rather than wattage test #s.
A more meaningful test value would be to do the test following a 'rest' / 'recovery' week following your first month of building up.
Right, I've noticed using PE for zones 1 and 2 in base works really well. The power and HR numbers don't match up well with PE on the trainer so as of now I'm tracking power and HR but using PE as the guide.
Different people have different strengths so there isn't really a set rule that applies to everyone.
Pictured below: My best power outputs from 2011. Estimated weight of 149lbs/ 67.59kg for the w/kg figures but I was lighter than that for some of the year. Edit: Fixed typo
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm just starting out with power so this is cool info. I will try out the other programs for power. It looks like your 30 min TT power is about 30w more than mine. I was on rolling hills with winter clothes and out of shape. I'm sure I'll have better numbers in a month.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm just starting out with power so this is cool info. I will try out the other programs for power. It looks like your 30 min TT power is about 30w more than mine. I was on rolling hills with winter clothes and out of shape. I'm sure I'll have better numbers in a month.
If you're not that fit at the moment then you should be able to improve quite a lot over the course of the season. It's one of the good things about a power meter as you can track your peaks and troughs. If you look at my top 10 power bests in post #18 the majority of power bests are concentrated between March and August 2011. There weren't many power bests set early in the year. I'd guess that you'll probably see a similar pattern develop.
Your choice of route will make a big difference to this sort of test as well. Rolling hills aren't ideal as your power tends to drop on downhill sections, dragging your overall average power down. A route that's totally flat, or a constant climb (if you're lucky enough to have 30 minute plus climbs nearby) is likely to result in higher power numbers than over a rolling course. I'd try doing tests over different routes to see how the power outputs compare.
Don't get too caught up in "chasing numbers" though. It's easy to focus on trying to improve a particular best power output, rather than working on other aspects of your riding. WKO+ 3.0 and its power profiles (as linked in post #2) are particularly bad for that because it only looks at short 5 second, 1 minute, 5 minute and 20 (or 60) minute durations. If you train for those specific durations it makes for a better profile but can be at the expense of doing more volume work. I ended up doing that a bit last year.
It is always interesting to see other peoples numbers. Today I did a 20 minute tempo session at 260w (after blowing up in some 4 minute intervals, first 4 minute was 360w, second one Allison kicked my arse). Finished off with three 1000w peak sprints. It was a hard day...
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Originally Posted by miss rides a lot
