Enthalpic

Most trainers can't handle those peak power numbers.

Hermes

If nslckevin gets slammed on Zwift racing, I am dead on arrival. My power profile is steep. I was a 400 meter runner and sold sprinter. My 20 minute power is okay but not great. I have a great standing start at the track but but but, the first couple of pedal strokes, where I generate a lot of torque, are NOT, IMO, properly captured by a traditional power meter. And probably not that valuable in Zwift mass start racing. I would need an SRM scientific or track PM to capture the faster transient, higher power which is true for others as well. And what does Zwift do with accurate transient power even if you send it to them? Smooth or average it out?

I have spent the last 10 years of racing working on generating more speed from the same amount of power. Hence, my cost of speed curve for a particular power required is low. That work is rendered meaningless on Zwift. And I have very good skills hiding in a pack and minimizing energy use. Again, not valued by Zwift.

And I am unwilling to cheat - not valued by Zwift.

Hence…DOA.

In fairness, I am DOA in some real world situations and I accept that as well but try to pick my events where I have a competitive advantage.

Enthalpic

Pushing against a wall will make you tired but you technically are doing no work. So at the very start you are exercising (applying force) but your power meter is correctly measuring that you are doing no work.

W=Fd

burnthesheep

Speaking of virtual, tried Rouvy today. I liked the "feel" of the ride and the non cheating loner nature. Also the real views. Downer, I have a ticket in already. They advertise being able to filter searches by "has video" or look at a map to see routes. Not seeing that in my app. If my app that runs on my Mac won't do that, that's dead on arrival.

I ain't randomly guessing at names to type into their thing for routes. There's some good stuff pre selected in some of their categories, but I wanted this to find videos of some other stuff.

So this might be DOA if the service ticket response is "only the PC version does that". As that's junk to have to search for routes how this version of the app is going.

Only other way is maybe I would go after work one day in the car and drive with video/gps of my top 3 TT courses in my area so I can practice ride them indoors. I mean, pacing a flat TT is super easy, but still.

We'll see.

brian44

FWIW he used ERG mode...I *feel* like actually gauging one's own effort will obviously lead to more variability in power application and potential wasted effort (i.e., many 300+ watt power spikes).

TMonk

Personally I hate erg mode... I routinely do interval workouts in "Free ride" mode, shifting with the terrain like I would in real life and tracking the efforts on my garmin.

TheKillerPenguin

^ Concur

himespau 

You might be surprised. I race on Zwift with a teammate who has tons more outdoor experience than me. I'm ~10 kg heavier than him and have a higher 1 min and 20 min W/kg (similar 15s and lower 5 min W/kg) - higher in raw W in all categories due to my weight. There are a few specific circumstances when I can beat him - in a race with a lot of sandbaggers and a long, flat start (where I can use my raw W to keep up with the baggers' group after he gets dropped) or one that has a 15 min+ climb (like Epic KoM or Innsbruck KoM) or is specifically Innsbruckring where I can use my superior 1 min power on the legsnapper to get into a group he can't if that group exists - but otherwise he beats me at least 3 times out of 4 (probably more) and usually does so while coming in 0.2 W/kg less than me (we're both usually lower than everyone around us but he's lower than me even though I weigh more than him, not the other way around). And usually pips me on the primes. He's better able to read the group to know which moves to cover, better able to sit in the draft without working or getting stuck in the churn of front to back, front to back, better about positioning before primes so he can surf through the pack to pick up FTS points and still do decently at FAL (while I frequently find myself on the front shortly before the start of a segment and have to choose between losing momentum to drift back or just hammering it while eating wind for FAL points and forgetting about FTS). They aren't exactly the same skills as what you have spent a lifetime honing outdoors, but efficient riding is efficient riding and can often beat out someone who is trying to win via brute force (at least when it's coupled with crappy racing like I do it).

Hermes

himespau Thanks for the detailed response and your experience.

himespau 

Whelp, my teammates didn't show (I knew they weren't going to) for the WTRL TTT tonight, so I decided to ride it like an iTT, and see how long I could stay out in front of the teams starting behind me (not long). 53:30 at 315 W and my Zwiftpower FTP is 314 W, so I guess it's closer than I'd expected. I was seriously tempted to try to push on for 6.5 more minutes just so I could come back here and report that, yes, this fat N of 1 could really hold 300 W for an hour, but I was just done after that long solo. Instead my hour is only 290 because of the last 6.5 minutes at ~100 W. OF course this is all on Zwift, so it's all pretend. Power at my smart trainer hub, but the trainer was only set at ~25% difficulty.

SapInMyBlood

Just for context what's your weight?

himespau 

Aw, don't rain on my parade like that. 318 for 53 minutes (or 329 for 20) is a whole lot less impressive when you see that I've ballooned to 105 kg.

GhostRider62

318 watts for 54 minutes should get your 105 Kg mass thru 40 km. Stick the same W/kg onto a 70 kg rider and they will need well over an hour IRL.

himespau 

Yeah, I think the whole reason I popped into this thread was to say that weight plays a big role in whether or not 300 W means much (in my case, it just means 3 W/kg). Momentum (and downhills) is really the only nice thing about being as big as I am. Gotta get my back and knee back into shape and then lose this weight to get back to race weight again (hopefully without losing too much power).

burnthesheep

I have nothing on this front yet, maybe by year's end.

Right now am doing a 290w Zwift ftp for some workouts and a 295w for others in my "rotation". I'm floating between 158 lbs and 161 lbs.

I did the Rouvy Mt. Mitchell climb and strung together about 2:05 or so of 260w AP. That was very painful but "easy" in that it's almost like ERG mode since the climb is so steady and not a high gradient. So no real surges to steal your power production over that time.

I'm pretty sure right now I could do around 40min at 300w if I wanted to. But 40 isn't 60.

GhostRider62

Since you are very aero, what is your 40k TT best?

I'm thinking of doing one this year. Would be nice to go under an hour at my age. 58-59 mins usually wins Grand Masters in my District. I would have to do a lot of field testing to get my CdA down.....or go out to those fast high desert courses in Ca or Az

burnthesheep

26.5 mph last year. If I hit power/aero goals this year maybe around 27.3mph or so.

For a 10'er I'm trying to hit 28mph. Out and back, u-turn included.

nslckevin

In real life performance it makes a huge difference if you’re 100kg and lean vs. 100kg w/ 20kg of excess fat.

That said…. To me, 300w for an hour at 100kg w/ 20kg of fat is much better than the same power for the lean 100kg guy. Internally I always think of my w/kg in terms of race weight. If I gain 5-10 lbs in the winter and I’m putting out good raw watts I don’t care that the w/kg number of lower than it could/should be. I know by the POWER that my fitness is good. The w/kg number is more important when it comes to going uphill of course, but if I’ve got the power in my legs I can lose a few lbs. and then go uphill fast.

burnthesheep

It would be worth it for you to head over to the road or training forum on here to find the topic "why does 240w not always equal 240w" where a guy was lamenting how much power it was to go around a pan flat nicely paved bike track loop at 22mph.

It boiled down to the person probably being larger and more of a parachute. Larger is more CdA and more cost from rolling resistance. Larger riders punch bigger holes for smaller riders to rest behind. Smaller riders punch smaller holes that if a larger rider is following one, it can be less of a rest than desired.

Even in the flats there's a quite tangible penalty to larger riders. Accelerations in the flats cost larger riders more than smaller riders also.

Unless someone is pretty good at bikes, like a Cat 3 or faster, I doubt they can drop pounds AND hold power at the same time on command. I don't find that realistic for a hobbyist cat 3/4/5. I find it more realistic they stay within 5 pounds of whatever discipline weight they want to target.

All that to say, a 300w hour ftp on a 100kg rider isn't remotely the same even on flatter terrain as a 300w hour ftp on a 70kg rider. I don't race with pros that are combos of 60kg Colombians and 75 to 80kg Gannas. So the power delta on the flats doesn't ever seem to play out that way.

nslckevin

So, I was telling a guy who is overweight that he should feel pretty good about his power output because his power number wasn’t bad and if he lost the weight he’d be even better. And you said a bunch of mostly unrelated stuff. Are you suggesting that the 100kg guy w/ 20kg of fat is going to put out LESS power after training and dieting enough to lose that 20kg? Are you thinking that this rider is already at his peak FTP? Because that’s what I was talking about. I was pointing out that his engine seems pretty good, he just needs to lighten up the chassis. That is not remotely the same thing as a big lean guy (say Gianna) trying to lose 10kg to be a GC rider.

What I was trying to point out is that the overweight 100kg guy should think of himself and his possibilities like he was at his race weight. So if he’s doing 300w for an hour (3.0 w/kg) he should consider that by losing the weight he turns into a 3.75 w/kg guy for an hour basically for free. None of that helps him at his current 100kg, but there is more engine inside than current performance would indicate.

I take your point about my fat 100kg rider pushing a bit more wind, but I promise you if that rider lost the 20kg and kept the same level of fitness that the thing he raves about isn’t going to be that he goes 1 mph faster on the flats because he’s smaller. He’s going to rave about how much easier it is to climb.

TMonk

I think there are other benefits to being smaller as well, like accelerations and possibly recovery from going into the red. It kinda makes sense that the less excess blood there is to circulate, the faster you might clear lactate. VO2 max goes up also for this reason as you lose weight. I'm not a doctor or a physiologist, just sorta what I've thought.

My power stayed the same from 2018 into 2019 but I lost 10 lbs going from 155 to 145 and it made me waaaaay faster. OK I might have gained like 5 or so watts on FTP as well, but not 10.

I attribute this to my ability to rapidly upgrade from 3 to 2 in 2019 in breakaway situations. Again my power was the same but I was light, snappy and recovered very quickly.

burnthesheep

It was someone earlier in this topic that mentioned the muscle mass tied up in the existing heavier weight being lost if someone drops mass too quickly. As I had this same question about a larger rider making power as you do now.

I just think the time scale isn't as quick as losing a few winter pounds if you want to hold the power.

This is all my guess about this.......

If I had to guess, the larger rider at 300w ftp has lots of not-very-dense mitochondria. Because they have a lot of muscle mass, from being larger. When you lose a lot of weight, you also will lose some muscle mass. So you just lost some mitochondria also. A smaller rider making the same power has a much denser set of mitochondria, through the training.

So, if the larger rider loses mass too quickly, they can't do the requisite training fast enough to make the mitochondria more dense to make up for the gross overall loss of mitochondria through the loss of muscle mass.

If you go over to Slowtwitch and dig around the search function for some topics on weight/bike power/running pace you'll inevitably find people that lost lots of weight quickly that came to complain about disappointment with bike power or run pace. Sometimes they got into running injuries.

It can be done, it's just a slow process. And like I said, if done right to keep the power likely just as slow as a rider gaining 20w in ftp in a year as a lighter rider.

TheKillerPenguin

I have extreme aero jealousy.

nslckevin

You guys keep talking like our 100 kg with 20kg of fat guy example is at peak fitness or something. The training (along with dieting) that he does to lose that weight is going to more than make of for any loss of muscle mass unless he’s doing something really stupid with his diet.

Example. I went through a fat phase while injured and having other interests in the early 2000’s. I went from 195 down to 160. And guess what. I was a **** of a lot more fit and went uphill and on the flats a hell of a lot faster than when I was 195. FYI, I got underwater weighed at the start and along the way. I did lose some muscle mass along the way. I upped my protein to help combat that issue, but in the end I was riding well and winning races again. A few years later I dropped another 8 pounds or so, kept the same watts and went uphill a lot faster. I figured that 8 pounds was worth about 10 watts on the climb on one of our local road races. (University RR at UC Santa Cruz)

Again, the guy I was replying to in my original reply was a heavy guy who by his post needed to lose weight and regain fitness. A perfect example of someone who should be ENCOURAGED by his potential race weight w/kg because he’s going to gain fitness as he loses the weight. Again, not and already fit and lean Ganna trying to lose 10-15kg to take on Pogacar for GC.

TMonk

nslckevin the circuit that goes up to McLaughlin and back? Killer race, did it a couple times in collegiate (WCCC) between 2006 and 2009.