Originally Posted by
Mose
Also found this to be true.
FWIW, I did the Allen and Coggan 20' test protocol about 2 months ago on a trainer and averaged 223W on the 20' interval, for a calculated FTP of 212, and at 75kg, not so good. Fast forward to last weekend, I went on one of my first group rides of the season with some fast locals. One is a pro. 45 mile ride, hilly (3k elevation). After going pretty hard for the first 2/3s of the ride, I got dropped on the long run in home that was mostly uphill, nothing over 3%, and headwind, smooth pavement, no stop signs. Not only did I have the mild uphills and head wind, but I had another dropped rider ahead of me to chase. I decide to do a hard time trial and averaged 283 watts for 30 min back into town. I'm highly skeptical my threshold would truly climb that much after 2 months of base training minus 1.5 weeks with stomach flu, so now I'm leery of doing any testing on a trainer.
My initial trainer solo test was similar to yours, and we're roughly the same size. However, Looking at my results from a 50 minute crit and a 94 minute road race confirmed that I can crank out somewhere between 240 and 250 wats for an hour at a time under race conditions (likely a little more if I wasn't trying to pace myself and save a little for hills and sprints). So I'm using 240 as my baseline for training and pacing. That puts me at 3.2 w/kg, which is in line with a 50 yr old cat 5 newbie. Given that they hand out trophies based on when you cross the finish line and not what your power meter says, I'll live with that number until I see consistent results at least 10% higher.
BB