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Old 03-06-18, 12:29 PM
  #22  
jsigone
got the climbing bug
 
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: San Diego
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Bikes: one for everything

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Hard to compare numbers and weight to pros when they have staff to train them, feed them and fix them. Not to mention they ride 50k-100,000 miles per yr or 40-60 hours per week. Personally my goal is 7hr a week on the bike.....

As a non racer, I wouldn't worry myself with w/kg noise. Just ride your darn bike and enjoy it. The power meter is more like the margin line of a white paper when writing an essay. Sway within these lines and you will enjoy the ride, go outside the line and it might get scribblly and painful or drift off sleep because its too slow.

You have your FTP, train a percentage of the FTP. Do a 1, 5 and 10min test at say x amount above the FTP and see where you blow up. How bad do you blow up and how much can your lower the watts and still recover for the next hill/group ride surge. Say your 5min is 390watts but legs are limp afterwards and takes 10min to recover because they are full of LA. What if you held 370watts at 5rpm higher cadence, stays overall .5mph slower but recovery is only 2mins. Which of those would you want to ride at more often?

Once you have a ball park of these numbers, you can push yourself or make you friends have some pain when the road gets flat and favors higher power, but rest assured they will give you pain back when the road flips. AKA faster recovery between surges. If you don't group ride often like like me, go out and smash strava segments against my own time. Harder to recover when no one is there to draft and hide behind, but thats part of the sport


outside world power numbers according to my Stages PM on yesterday's ride,
61min, 807ft climbing, normalized power 266watts, power to weight is 2.89w/kg, end results 19.3mph average speed solo.

and I still had energy to run 5miles afterward
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