Anyone with an FTP>350 Watts?
I am curious to see if there are very many people with an FTP greater than 350 watts and if so are they able to raise it every year?
Last year in January I had an FTP of around 340 watts, but when I tested(trainer) I was not in the aero's the entire time.
Before Wisconsin this year I tested and did 322 in the Aero's. My goal this year is to be 350+ in the aeros when I leave the off season.
My question is for those with FTP's in this area, are you continuing to see annual gains that are pretty decent or are they pretty small for the effort you are having to put in.
If you are seeing good gains, what has been working well for you? Lot's of 2 x 20's, 5 x 2.5 @120%, all of the above along with a lot of riding?
My long term goal is to get my FTP to 400 Watts, I know that is a tall order but I am trying to get a gauge of what it will take to do that.
Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks!
JT
P.S. My weight lately has been between 200-210, my biggest goal is to get below 200 right now, but be in the 180's for race season in 2012.
Comments
This is just like golf. I have a handicap of 2. It is harder to get to 0 at this level, than someone who is a 20 handicap and trying to get to 10. As is in running, If you have a pace of 5:30, it is difficult to get to 5:15
I really like to see someone hold 350 watts for 20 mins. twice. If I could do that, I would rip everyone face off in a Tri event locally!
What supplements are you taking? I need all the help I can get!
I'm going to go conservative for IMAZ, and use 310-320.
The absolute number is probably less important relative to your question than % gain...if you've just started focused riding, EN style, and you're younger than some of us, 10-20% gains are realistic. If you've been riding awhile, and working at it, probably much less....then the task becomes holding higher watts for a longer period of time and being efficiently aero.
My experience has been OS gains on the order of 5-8%, but this really just gets me back to where I've been for a few years, 305-310w.
Good luck.
Maybe the best use of your time and energy is to do what seems to be the rage. Nowadays around here, lifting the right side of your power curve. More longer intervals in that 80-90% range so when race time comes you will be able to easily hold that 75% for an IM and 85% for a HIM. Not saying you shouldn't work on raising the FTP, but it seems to me the 400w goal is not gonna come too easy while you focus on triathlon.
Plus, what's the end game? Just so you can say you have an FTP of 400? It's a lot to put into a sport where you can make time gains in a lot of places. Would your time be better spent improving your run or your swim vs. trying to raise your FTP to that level when the gains are likely to be smaller relative to the time put in?
Watts per kilogram is the equalizer to discuss power among people of different sizes. E.g., a big guy like Fabian Cancellera has a much higher FTP that a squirt like Alberto Contador, but their w/kg are probably very close. At 210#, and an FTP of 322, your w/kg is about 3.4 - fairly average among good AGers. At that level, you probably have a lot of opportunity to improve, even if you just drop 25#. That would give you a w/kg of 4.0 - which puts you in a much more elite category.
And in the end, the whole idea is to go faster, as Jennifer implies. @ 185#, not only would you be able to go up hills much more easily on the bike, but you'd run faster as well. Working on body comp and just doing the OS as programmed would be the way to go, it seems to me. And pay attention to that w/kg, not your FTP, when measuring progress.
Having said all that, I'd predict you could raise your power by 5-10% easily during the upcoming winter.
Focus on Al's comments, that is the key. w/kg............
watts per Kilogram is a great indicator or proxy for triathlon bike performance but it is not the key and the only important thing. In fact at most triathlons there just is not enough climbing for w/kg to be key. You can have be at 6 w/kg at FTP but if you you are sitting up on a road bike, or have a horrible aero position, or can't stay in your aero bars then someone with a lower w/kg that is more aero will beat you.
I believe that watts per cda, or watts divided by your drag is in my opinion a much better indicator for triathlon or TT performance. The problem is that it takes more effort to test for w/cda and therefore everyone just defaults to w/kg being the key.
Now, that said, in most cases w/kg will be a good indicator and good enough, but just keep in mind that is not always true. Trust me, the 4.7 w/kg guy, that a very aero and much heavier guy with only 4 w/kg can go faster on a flat course ... give me some hills though and it's a different story. As Al said, just look at the build of a tour TT specialist vs a climber.
running is a different story and weight matters much more as you are lifting your body weight about 180 times per minute... on the bike you have a saddle to hold you up.
At the end of the day you want:
- The highest FTP you can have without impacting your ability to complete your run training (it can be argued that 2 hr or 5 hr power could actually be a better indicator for long course triathlon, but again that becomes harder to test, so FTP is used as a proxy or indicator of what you could hold for longer)
- The most aero position that you can hold for the entire race without impacting your ability to run off the bike
- The lowest body weight you can maintain without losing strength, impacting your ability to recover from workouts, or getting sick
We should all focus on all three of those and optimize each one if we really want to have our best performance, but depending on your situation you may have more "low hanging fruit" in one of the three areas than the other.
damn I really love this haus; thanks for the education
Thanks for the feedback.
I don't want anyone to think that I am going to make any extra efforts outside of regular OS training to raise my FTP, because I am not. The only thing I will be doing differently with my program is I will have 1 extra day of cycling a week because I am a Spin Instructor, otherwise I am sticking to the plan.
Since I started testing in 2009 I have seen pretty good improvements in my power 2009 @297, 2010 @322, 2011 @340. I have never done an EN OS program, but with all the interval training (which I have never done this much before) I will be very interested to see the results. I think from the reading I have done both Rich & Patrick seem to have been at the same FTP numbers for a while, which makes me wonder if I should plan to see my numbers stop going up up unless I take on a single sport focus, which I am not willing to do at this time, there are way to many other areas I can improve on.
I recognize and and understand the importance of W/kg and that it is much more important vs. raw power.
My main focus this off season is to get my weight down and improve my running, however I do expect to see improvements on the bike. This past year I got as low as 192 pounds and I know I can get back there and lower. I have started using the App "Lose It" to track my nurtition on my phone and I think having this information available to me at all times will help me reach my weight goal.
I am not too focused on the 400 Watt FTP it is just a goal I have thrown out there for myself. I would like to reach it, but if my FTP never gets above 350 and I make to Kona one day, I will be much happier. I was just checking around to see how others in the EN Community had done with making improvements to there FTP when they crossed the 350 watt barrier.
Thank you!
JT
@ Matt A. - Wise words from a guy who just turned 24 mph+ at the Austin HIM then ran like a bat out of hell!
Not too many people around here has a FTP north of 350 which is weird cause pretty much everyone on ST does?
Mine has parked somewhere in the 320's for a while, not sure if I could ever get to 350, maybe but it would take a hell of a lot more dedication than I am willing to put in. As some others have mentioned you really need to focus on dropping pounds if you want to go fast in races. It will make far more of a difference.
W/KG is certainly not the only thing that matters, especially true for little teeny people like Matt. I used to see people with 4 w/kg and think they would be really fast but they were often little people and did not have the power to push the bike through the air. That said, watts are really not your problem, its the weight.
If you are sitting at 210 even though you are riding/racing all the time it is not going to be a really easy task to drop more than 20 pounds. Need to get on that asap if it is the goal. If you do, you will be a lot faster. 188 pounds is a little more than 85 kg, you will need an FTP of 340 to be at 4 w/kg. If you weigh 178 lbs [little less than 81 kg] you only need 324 to be at 4.0. You will be far better off at 178/324 than 188/340. The nice thing about losing weight is that you will run faster, look better, live longer etc.
Peter Reid was 6'3" and raced between 158-162, he still had the muscle mass to swim and ride pretty well. Good luck!
...But you should see him now. Like somebody attached a bike pump to his navel and inflated him a bit.
What Al and ChrisG said.
When you start doing the math on w/kg and weight's effect on VDot, then consider any go-faster, pointy-end goals you might you, you'll quickly see that body composition is a very important 4th sport of triathlon.
Also, as Tom and Chris alluded to, the limiter is often how long can you sustain the focus to get continue to lift your FTP year after year? The good news is, all it takes is work: insert on ass on bike, kick your ass, recover, repeat. Cycling-only blocks are a way to allow you to ride harder and recover harder more often.
The bad news is...it's a lot of work and the work can get old after a while. As I've said many times in this forum, in my experience 90-95% of AG'ers are only able to sustain a laser-like focus on triathlon improvement, especially at the Ironman distance, for 3-4 years. Beyond that other interests, commitments, etc begin knocking on the door.
Not much improvement of FTP in 2011, but I dropped to 167 lbs. Raced Boulder 70.3 this year and finished the bike in 2:20. Now, the courses are entirely different. Boulder is flat (ironically) but LP is not. Also, i spent a lot more time aero in Boulder than in LP. That said, I think the weight loss would have translated to a LP split of well-under 6 hrs at the same effort, and likely would have been more impactful on LP than it was on Boulder, given the course differences.
All this to say that Rich, Chris, Matt and others are spot on. Improve body comp and aero when power plateaus a bit, and you'll still see a lot of real improvement.
There are some great points made here by haus members and WSM's. All the talk about absolute wattage, watts/kg and sustaining aero-ness is valid but it all boils down to how fast you can race. Take all the low hanging fruit you can then start identifying other areas where gains are tougher but achievable. Body comp is absolutely a part of this as not only does your watts/kg improve but being thinnner likely helps you attain a more aero position and "narrows" your frontal wind picture. Plus your running is defintely going to benefit from better body comp.
I'm a much better cyclist than runner, swimmer, triathlete so I have tried to maintain my FTP while improving my body comp, swim technique and vdot as well as learn to pace properly, fuel correctly etc. This is what will get you to Kona if that is your goal.
That being said, your original question was slanted more towards making yearly gains on top of an already lofty FTP. As stated above, I've been trying to keep my FTP from declining while I spend more time on the other two disciplines in tri. I have not done any significant period of time on bike only blocks but I can tell you a couple years ago I focused on running and backed off on bike and lost 10-20 watts FTP but set some lifetime PR's in running. I was about the same finish time on some of the local tri's. What I lost on bike, I gained on run! Now I am trying to claw back those running gains and stay at my historic cycling FTP.
My usual FTP is 320-330W and my weight is 150-160 depending on time of year. I've been riding for 11 years and got a PM 5 years ago. I'm 45 years old. Since I've had a PM, I've never seen any massive FTP improvements over my 320-330W but I'd already been riding and training hard for 6 years before I ever knew what a FTP was! I also have not done any cycling intensive blocks over one week.
Good luck and I think you have more gains that'll be classified as low hanging fruit but the % improvement tends to flatten out as you climb up the chain. I like the golf handicap analogy. The better you are, the harder it is to get better!
Regards, Jeff
Wow, some pretty impressive numbers going on in here.
Fun fact: If you're riding at over 300W, you're producing as much power as a high-end computer graphics card is consuming. Not sure if that's supposed to make us humans feel awesome or inadequate...
How many watts is 1 horsepower?
Wikipedia claims about 746.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower