After a personal record up Alpe du Zwift today, under 50 minutes for the first time, I have bestowed the 4W/KG achievement on myself.
After the the ride (consistent with how I always weigh myself), I came in at 144.4 pounds, or slightly higher than my Zwift weight of 143 pounds. Using my actual weight, 4W/kg = 261.8 watts.
Doing 266 watts for 48 minutes, I got these FTP projections, all of which are above the 262W threshold.
Intervals.icu: 264W
Xert 268W
Zwift: 263W
If I had done just 245W for another 12 minutes, I would have still surpassed 262W for one full hour. I feel comfortable saying I could have done that.
After 8 years, it’s a great achievement, but also doesn’t change anything. It’s just nice to know I was able to do it and I want to keep going and apply it in the real world.
The good news:a legit Zwift victory in a time trial across all classes through a personal record of 254 watts for 54 minutes.
The bad news: My weight was underreported (I didn’t mean to cheat!). My weight post ride was 144.4 pounds, 1.6 kg / 3.5 lbs higher than reported on Zwift. My time differential was 1 minute 26 seconds so I feel like I would have won no matter what.
The big takeaway was that my power wasn’t quite my goal of 4.0 w/kg for the 54 minutes, but the still strong yet not-quite good enough 3.88 w/kg.
I started cycling in the summer of 2016 after purchasing a used 2010 Kestrel Talon for $750. I started training at the end of that year with TrainerRoad, and ever since it’s been a long path towards a single metric of performance: 4W/KG. I hit 3W/KG within a couple of months and hoped I could 4W/KG within a couple of years.
Those years became 8, at least according to estimates from Intervals.icu with eFTP and TrainerRoad with AIFTP.
To understand the full context, FTP stands for Functional Threshold Power for cyclists. It’s a measure of your power over a sustained period of time. It’s supposed to be the max power you can make for one complete hour, but if you can imagine, it’s quite mentally and physically challenging to go 100% for that long, so many people like to use 95% of one’s maximum 20 minute power.
Sometimes, even 20 minutes can be too long, or perhaps you do really good power for 30 minutes, but didn’t try to maximize the 20. How do you calculate FTP then? In recent years, there have been a number of methods to try to calculate it based on your best power for X amount of time. And from these methods, I have been told that I have hit 4W/KG.
I don’t quite believe it myself. A few days ago, I hit 251W (avg) for 47 minutes. It wasn’t the best day for me, but I think if I were well rested, I could hit 255W. Could I have extended that further, to say 50, 55, or 60 minutes? Perhaps.
If I could do my projected power close to one hour, I’ll definitely be able to achieve my goal 1 hour mark at Mt Diablo. The only thing to do now is to keep training and see if I can push my high power for longer. I need something close to one hour at 260W to believe I truly hit 4W/HR. As a mid-40’s cyclist, I know my time to maintain such fitness becomes harder and harder.
I Spit Hot Fire 