Also, my numbers are in the Cycling Analytics data base. My numbers are included so that furiousferret can feel better about himself i.e. I am the statistical equivalent of pack fodder.

I know of one 19ish year old Cat 4 with well north of a 300 watt threshold (he recently did 400 for 20 minutes at ~170 lbs), but he won't be a cat 4 for very long. Or a 3, either.

I'd say a good number of the local cat 1/2s that are 160 lbs+ can do it, but there are also a good number of Cat 2/3s in the 145-165lb range that can't. All the good cat 1s I know can do it easily, and for multiple hours (one did it for four hours a couple of months ago, another just did 325 for 4 hours; pretty big exceptions).

So no, I'd say it is most definitely not common in the least, especially in the lower categories. Easily verifiable on Strava.

But everyone is faster on the internet...

That's not nice!

What happened to Fudgy?

Fudgy is a big boy, with big power! He's for sure done > 300w for an hour.

I see Ygduf on Strava and think, 'I should check up and see how he's doing and never do...'. Hopefully he's taking care of his kid, @mattm. Also the twins.

It is posted on his Palomar Strava. I do see some significant variance in power meters, but I have no doubt he's over 350. I'll spot him the 35 seconds.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...bbd30446d8.png

I thought it was rather respectful to bring up one of the bigger power guys. O - I get it. That was likely an auto correct thing. Sorry.

I believe on a machine in a German lab in the early 70s (I trust that more then than a power meter now) Eddie Merckx did north of 480 for an hour. I got to think being almost 20lbs-40lbs (he was huge as a junior ITT WC) heavier than Eddie Indurain did more on the road, but there are no numbers I know of, just he was big and fast - and could climb.
I expect the PEDs helped a lot for both so maybe they'd be 10%-15% less now?
Those sill are big numbers. Look them up.

480 jfc...

I might be off. I recall seeing that 480 number from '72. I can't find it. This is the lab test I was referring to. Still, I think the bigger guy did more.
"In 1975 at a Sporthochschule in Cologne, Germany, professional cyclist Eddy Merckx produced over 0.6 horsepower for 1hr (455 Watts) on a cycling ergometer"

His VO2 was 77. Not bad, but at this level it does not really correlate to power. I saw my kid max about 80 (at 15) and power kept going up. The beet root tests found this too. I know "science" has a formula for this, but reality is Eddie was 15 or so VO2 points below what has been recorded and hes still got the highest lab power (that I know of).

There is discussion here https://forum.cyclingnews.com/thread...55-watts.7900/

455 or 480 that's absolutely nuts. Inside too!

Wut?

What exactly did you contribute to the topic? You claimed in a 33 forum topic way way back to have been in your 22nd year racing.

The original topic wasn't really about the subjectivity of if 300w is useful at all in any kind of racing. As winning matters, not what the little gauge says.

You could have chosen to click, view, and move on...........but you had to take a dig. Or you could have provided feedback worthy of those 22 years.

Everything is subjective? You can see the Zpower results online anytime, listing power, power duration, w/kg, and weight. You can pull up folks you've followed for years on Strava. Shoot, people that coach can pull up their TP or WKO5 data and see what that data looks like and knows what they race in.

There's nothing subjective about hard data.

What are the variables? If we ignore a fair variable of the measuring device used, it's just the data itself. I'm not sure how Coggan compiled the original "FTP chart of talents" people love to post up, but there had to be some amount of data behind it.

Not to mention if there was, we KNOW the numbers of participants in each of the race categories he placed in that chart.

So.......no, I don't think it's fair to say it's all subjective and there are too many variables. What's subjective about the commonality of 300w for an hour? It's a yes or no question then applied to a demographic of cyclists.

Again, what exactly did you contribute?

I think it's a lot less rare than people think. I know plenty of guys who can do 300W for an hour and plenty of them are in their 40's and 50's. The local young hot shot p/1/2 guys here in NorCal would be north of 350W. (for guys who are say 60-70ish kg)

Here is a good example. Mt. Hamilton out of San Jose. Part of the annual Mt. Hamilton RR. It's 18 miles of climbing but has two short descents that will lower your average power. Still, tons of guys over 300 watts for this climb. Not to mention that they still have more than 40 tough miles to the finish.

Personally, I looked through my Strava and found where I averaged 300W for 2:30 at age 56.

I can only speak for myself as I average about 300 Watts, give or take. I have a lot of roll-off being a sprinter and find it gets harder and harder to hold power the closer it gets to an hour. I absolutely loathe Alpe du zwift which I have yet to conquer in an hour. I see 300 Watt averages in the results from competitive Bs on Zwift. On the road, I can usually keep up with the second fastest group ride groups in a large metro area. No clue what race category I'd be competitive in these days. I never had a power meter during my racing days when I had a higher heart rate and 20 pounds lighter. These days I usually enter C events based on my calculated FTP and weigh-in right before events and calibrate often. I'm just under the C/B line but a lot of races are close to an hour and I know I'm not competitive against 3.9s so I stay in the Cs unless I want a challenge. I know there's sandbagging, weight doping, height doping and all kinds of other shenaniganry going on. I've even had a jersey taken by a Zwift Insider bot that was flying through Watopia at super-human speeds. Not sure what they were testing but I wasn't too happy about losing a jersey to a cyborg. Thanks to power meters, I now know I'm best at 15-30 seconds efforts than longer efforts (1757 - 5 second, 708 - 1 minute, 426 - 5 minute, 346 - 20 minute). Being a heavier rider In Zwift, I just try to stay off the front and then work hard to stay in over the steeper hills. My W/kg are noticeably lower than those around me on the flats but my Wattage is slightly to considerably higher, depending on the gradient. On steeper gradients I have to match W/k exactly. Trying to lose weight. If I got down to my college weight with my current power I'd be at the top end of the Bs. Looking at the chart that was posted earlier makes me want to cry inside to compare my Wattage with W/kg, but it is what is until I can get down to fighting weight again. Below is a screen shot from Zwift Power.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...79ef83730b.jpg

At that altitude, was there significant altitude-induced power loss happening over that last hour plus?

Absolutely. In my experience I've found the chart in this article on Joe Friel's web site to be pretty accurate. I started out looking to average 300W, but by the time I got to about 8000', 300W is my altitude adjusted FTP. That, combined with the fatigue from going pretty hard for the last two plus hours ends up making the 300W unsustainable. That was kind of my plan, just ride at 300W until I couldn't and then just take what I could get for the rest. It wasn't like blowing up, it was like turning into a big headwind. You're still going just as hard, but slower now.

I guess people are unique. My body simply would not ever have the combination of power that high and a weight high enough to bring the w/kg down that much. I mean, I would have to eat like a madman. Like, eat more than I'm even willing to eat just for fun. Even then, the hours riding at the power necessary to get to that level of power..........that's even more calories in.

I think that disconnect is why it's hard for me to comprehend. I follow a coworker on Zwift from Denmark. Dude was a Danish national roadie or something at some point earlier in their life. But now they're quite a bit larger as they've grown older. They'll average into the 300's up Alpe du Zwift but I'll only put out like 250w and have a faster time by a couple minutes. So I do not question their power abilities at all. Dude has done nearly 400w for 20min in the last year at some point.

If I put out power like that all the time, my body would just disappear.

Maybe closer to a time trial race I should try to put on a few kg extra (just enough to still fit the skinsuit).

This is absolutely weight-dependant. I am 56 years old and my weight varies from 195 lbs (88kg - cut) to 225 lbs (102kg). Most of time 205-210. Last summer (I live in cold Quebec Canada so winter riding is at 8mph on a fatbike) I was doing intervals 4 x 15 min between 330 and 340 W mesured on calibrated Garmin Vector3. And I did a 3h45 ride at 298 Normalized Power. And reached 1695 W on a sprint. And about 10/15 years ago, while doing Whiteface Hillclimb race under 55 min, I was evaluated doing the effort around 380W avg for my weight. So those numbers (300 W) are real for average folks like me. That said I am not a racer and my point is I would still get dropped like a rock if I was (wether in real world or Swift) because of my weight ... So is weight an advantage or disadvantage for reaching cycling performance ?

Saw lots of opinions, and those differ from facts. Racing is a lot more than watts. Things like staying out of crashes and preserving as much energy as possible. Generating hundreds of watts at the finish doesn't mean much if you've been dropped. The only htings that are important to me are trends I see from calories burned on rides and power generated on my trainer. The accuracy is not important as long as the graph goes up.

I was there! Though 55 minutes then isn't 55 minutes now, since they moved the start to the ski resort.

Right. But relatively speaking that would play to my favor since my power to weight ratio is more beneficial on flats than uphill.

The accuracy isn't important? What happens when you use a powermeter outside? Or get a new trainer? Just resign yourself to starting all over with the data?

Accuracy is vitally important.

If I were lying in an ICU bed hooked up to heart, blood oxygen and breathing rate monitors, I would consider that accuracy "vitally" important. Trying to track my fitness, not so much.