Spring Water

You give cat 3's too much credit.

bostongarden

This thread is still going on? Have fun folks!

MDcatV

a dash of fred, a little dick swinging, some bad info, but actually a much better thread than the title would have you expect it to be.

bostongarden

Aha, so it has moved off the Subject Line topic; I'll give a look through.

Psimet2001 

Just found this and thought it would be interesting:


TT results for a 10 mile TT in an omnium 2 years ago. I am sure it was part of a conversation about power output.

nutterbutter

https://www.gmsr.info/mad.php
Maybe not an hour. Close enough.

Grumpy McTrumpy

I have done that race.

shovelhd

Me, too. The criterium is a blast. The rest, pure pain.

TexMac

I see you are in Houston. You do the crits or any road races this year in chapel hill and fort hood?

Dolamite02

spectastic

I did.

Did alright at chappell hill (didn't have too much time to train, but was fresh for the race)

got my ass kicked at fort hood (came off of a week of 12 hr night shifts, took a nap to drive 5 hrs in the morning to race - not a great experience)

Impreza_aL

i'll play, 5'8'' 79 kg (no muscle) w/ 260 ftp managed to rack up 20 points this year

JohnKScott

42 watts

rdupuy11

The reason I'm resurrecting this old thread with my first post is - Google sent me here in answer to my question about the watts I would need to race in a criterium. (Cat 5 in my case).

I've seen the dismissal of this question countless times, but the question does serve a purpose.

My FTP is about 160 watts and my watts per kg is about 2.0 w/kg, am I ready to race in a Cat 5? I'm not allowed to ask about speed? What if my average speed on the flats is under 20mph with no wind (it's under that by 5mph...)?

Is it still unimportant about watts and speed, or did it just get important?

I think sometimes the more experienced forget that it's possible to be completely new. heck, if you told me you need to pedal up to 50mph on a flat, by yourself, it would've sounded right 3 months ago, I didn't know anything about what speeds bikes do.

Thanks to the few of you that managed to spit out an answer, despite your distaste in doing so, I know what I need to train a whole heck of a lot now... Going to a Cat 5 race right now would only make me a danger to myself and others. I'm not ready.

I may have never raced, but I will boldly declare that a bicycle race is different from your neighborhood 5k foot race. In our neighborhood 5k you can enter with any skill level, including only the ability to walk the 5k - and you'll get some result.

The only result I would get in a crit today, is being a road hazard to the faster riders.

C'mon folks...of course its OK to get an idea of what you need to train for to get a minimum set of skill before arriving at a race. When the time comes, I'm not going to hesitate to sign up for a Cat 5 race. I've heard the advice, and yes I admit it's good advice....sign up for the Cat 5, learn by doing. it isn't about watts (except I insist you have to have a bare minimum to work with). it isn't about speed (except if you have no speed).

basically I logged in to insist that a person can suck enough that the question about watts, or even speed, actually is valid

I'm going to take the lowest number someone admitted too - try my hardest to improve to that level this year, and see if I can race a cat 5 - knowing full well I may get dropped big time, it's no biggy....I figure it'll take several races to learn. But as I write this, it's January, there are no cat 5 races on the schedule where I live, I need to train until Spring ( and maybe spring of next year, lol)....having a watt and average speed goal for training is a useful idea.

And in summary, I'm calling it, you need to do 2.8 Watts/Kg to race in a Cat 5. :-) They didn't know that back in 2010, but now it's well known, thanks to Strava.

(the previous paragraph is completely made up, but, someone had to give a definitive answer)....

TMonk

@rdupuy11 how long have you been riding? and about how much time/week have you spent on the bike during that time period?

It's ridiculous to assume that someone with no experieince or training history can compete in a race. The converse is also true. While there is a full spectrum between not riding and riding tons, it doesn't take a whole lot of miles to be able to sit in the pack of a flat criterium race - mainly skill.

canuckbelle

At 80kg, I suspect that you need an FTP around 200 to have any hope holding onto a Cat 5 crit. And that includes doing interval training so you can handle the surges. Generally, it's the surges that get people dropped in crits, not the FTP requirement. If you can surge, relax, repeat 50 times better than the guy with a 270 FTP, you'll be in there and he'll be off the back.

But 240 FTP at your weight, and you can definitely handle Cat 5 crits.

caloso

What canuckbelle said. It's the surges that kill you, or rather the lack of recovery between them. 30" and 1' on/off intervals are great for this. You don't even need a powermeter, just a timer.

rubiksoval

Indeed, it's the surges. Always the surges.

Any group rides at all? That's going to be the biggest factor and help in racing. If you're jumping into a race with little to no pack experience, you're not going to last very long.

You can fake your way through a lot of races with just a little pack skill, but that takes getting experience. Best way to get experience is by joining as many rides and groups as are available. Learn how to be close to others, how to be boxed in, how to move up the outside and inside (safely), etc.

DannoXYZ 

Yeah, if you don't have good pack-riding and maneuvering skills from doing lots of practice-crits, you'll find yourself in the 2nd half of the pack and will have to accelerate from 15-30mph+ at least 4x per lap. That's going to require +1000 watts for 5-10s to catch a pack that's going at 25mph. Then you'll have 10-20s to recover from that effort while trying to draft and ride at lower than FTP. Then do it again, and again and again. FTP and average-speed don't count for squat in crits. Well, not as much as all the other variables combined (bike-handling skills, pack-maneuvering skills, spotting dangerous riders, picking out who to follow on 2nd-to-last lap, etc.).

DannoXYZ 

BTW, watts/kg is only partially accurate since that's acceleration. For flat crits, it's watts/front-area which dictates steady-state speed & top-speed. When you're in a tuck, there's actually very little difference in front-area between a 120-lb hillclimber versus a 160-lb crit specialist. But the 160-lb guy will be able to generate significantly more max-power for those 5-10s surges... while seated and blocking less wind...

Heck, I've drafted off guys going +40mph in a finishing sprint and they just pull away...

furiousferret

Knowing how to ride in a pack can mitigate what you have to do. FTP and W/KG don't mean much in the sense of the actual numbers in a race, meaning you don't need a high FTP to keep pace, you need a high FTP so the pace feels like a warm up and you get to the end fresh.

For example, this is my experience in races, or very close to it:

In a crit at a pace of 25 mph with surges in the corners (250 watts FTP)

• Good pack riding skills - 170 watts. 68% of FTP
• Poor pack riding skills - 210 watts. 84% of FTP

The difference between those means what you can do in the last lap; you have to be fresh at the end to compete, and going at 80%+ of FTP you aren't going to finish well. You can have the best sprint in the field, but I'll take the guy the guy that sat in at zone 2 every time.

So if I were you my priorities would be

• Raise FTP
• Learn to ride in a pack
• Cornering

jdms mvp

anecdotal, how many whats.

Cat 5 , won 3 of 7 races entered.
Started riding in May 2011
DEC 2011 - first 20m test , 236w .
1 month later 268w. @ 146lbs / 66.5kg

Cat 4, handful of top 10s and a few top 5s.
Fall 2012 - 299w. @ 146lbs / 66.5kg
DEC 2012 - 260w @ 146lbs / 66.5kg

Cat3, won a TT , won a RR, won MABRA cat 3 RR champs in fall.
Fall 2013 - 301w @ 146 / 66.5kg
Jan 2014 - 306w
Spring/Fall 2014 - 334w @63kg

Cat 2, five top 5s, and two top 10s in GC
Dec 2014 - 312w 20m test
Spring 2015 - 332w (hit earlier in season and at a lower CTL than 2014) @ 63kg
Summer/Fall 2015 - hadn't tested since April.
- Upgraded to Cat1 in Sept 2015

Cat 1, in 2016, slightly higher power in non-20m timezones, got married, didn't race much, set local driveway KOMs ablaze.

mattm

It's not the size of the watts that matters, it's how/when you use 'em.

If it was all about watts, I'd still be a 3.

hack

Heck ... I'd still be a 5.

aaronmcd

I'd like to know how this suddenly happened 2 years later. After what looks like a plateau. Tell me the secret!