Originally Posted by
Hoyista
I am a beginner, but I actually enjoy riding with a bit of intelligent structure......I don't want to bore you with my life story but I know a few numbers from Zwift: FTP 3.4w/kg and my last ride was a 75 mile sportive rode at 15mph average.
I think your FTP of 3.4 w/kg is off by a lot. It took me years of dedicated hard training to get to an FTP of 3.0 w/kg (233 watts at 76 kg/168 lbs, and maybe 15% body fat), riding 5-6 days a week, 30-50 miles a day, with 80-120 mile rides on most weekends, and with tons of high intensity interval training, up to 800 watts on 10 sec sprints. At that point I was doing 100 mile rides at 19.9 mph, which is a huge difference compared to 75 miles at 15 mph, which at that speed, this online power calculator shows you have an FTP of about 1.2 w/kg
https://www.omnicalculator.com/sports/cycling-wattage
If you want to crunch training numbers, like myself, it's either time to get your smart trainer calibrated correctly, and/or buy a good power meter.