Originally Posted by
revchuck
I got a copy of the new edition of
Training and Racing with a Power Meter earlier this week and have been perusing it.
There's a table in it that characterizes cycling fitness by w/kg. They thought of doing one for Masters and Juniors, but for Masters, there are apparently lots of guys in their late 50s/early 60s holding 5 w/kg at threshold and the authors thought it wouldn't be useful. I think I met a few of them a couple of weeks ago in Georgia.
Getting there myself oughta be easy, just lose 15 lbs and gain 100 watts at threshold. Gimme a couple of weeks...
Good book that I need to get my hands on. All I've got is the old Carmichael book, and I didn't realize who THAT was until I got into riding bikes more than on the local brew cruise. Whatever, I learned something.
Either way, I feel like the whole propagation of structured training to the masses and Zwift has made roadie racing stuff even less accessible for the true novice level stuff. It might sound like sore bruised apples or whatever, but that old Coggan ftp chart is a bunch of ****. Yes, performance is the best indicator (like races and race like rides). But, there's not a place on God's green Earth that a Cat 4/5 can race at the numbers often tossed around. I ride with guys like that on the local group rides, and they got shot out the back the first lap.
I'm seeing the front of our 4/5's these days laying out some pretty silly #'s for what should be the lowest level of road racing.
Back to the workouts............I ate too much lunch and had too much coffee. This gave the combination of a wild ability to drive some VO2 and threshold power in a fast neighborhood roll, but also the distinct feeling after 30 minutes that I wanted to hurl in the cul d' sac.
I took back my little neighborhood crit/road race loop crown though. Hopefully 20 seconds and 24mph up 75ft/mi will hold for a little while at least until I tickle up the power some more. I wanted more laps, but too many brain dead parents and kids roaming today. Roaming the streets like they're randomly walking through a vacant wheat field or something almost getting hit by passing cars. Must all be on Xanax trips. So packed it up before the rainstorms hit.
Tossed in one sprint to the mailbox too just to make sure that's still in the 4-digit range. It is. Good enough for not ever needing to use it. Womp womp womp.
No good for finishing mid pack chasing for nothing.
This week was low TSS overall but pretty high intensity on the workouts. VO2, 100%'ers, a 10mi TT, then the 1/2 hour today. I probably don't want to know how long my HR was over 170 this week.