power/watts

[Megan]

Does anyone here know how much power elite or other women cyclists can put out? I'm working on my own power with my Computrainer. I can find plenty of blogs on Armstrong's power but nothing specific for the ladies. I'm tired of taking my husband's numbers (430w for 2 minutes, 340 for 14 minutes) and multiplying by 2/3 for a goal.

[maillotpois]

It's a little annoying. We're working with a group that does performance assessment for elite cyclists and triathletes, including the BMC team. They've got all these numbers and data for male athletes, but don't "seem" to have any specific data for women.

I'm going in for my own testing later this week, and I am going to grill them on this. I'll let you know what I find out.

[maillotpois]

I did my max power and all that testing today. These folks work with elite triathletes and cyclists, and so I asked about women's power. They said there's not a lot of studies on this, but told me that pro women generally can sustain power output over about 300 watts. For Kristin Armstrong's TT championship, she held 325 watts continuously.

[velogirl]

there's actually a lot of data on elite women available -- you just need to know where to look! and with the advent of on-board power meters, coaches are able to collect data from a wide range of clients.

hopefully this chart will answer your questions (developed by power guru andy coggan).

btw, a straight watts number won't give you much information. what you want to compare is power-to-weight ratio (ie watts/kg of body weight).

ps -- if you have specific questions about this, please email me off-line as I'm not hanging around TE much these days. I'm happy to share my knowledge if folks are interested.

[maillotpois]

So would the 5 sec. value be say your max power, and the 20 min one be more the standard "power to weight" value? Those 5 sec numbers look more like max power outputs - I remember reading about how all the TdF riders were trying to get over a 7 power to weight threshold, so it looks like either the 5 or 20 minutes translate to that absolute number they reference.

Interesting chart.

[velogirl]

Most likely you're trying to compare FTP (functional threshold power). To determine FTP, you'd perform a 20-minute TT effort (preferably doing this more than once with a full recovery between efforts, then taking the average of the efforts) Your FTP is 95% of your 20-minute power. Then you can just calculate your power-to-weight ratio. You can also test the other durations to compare your strengths or model your potential (ie are you a time trialist, a sprinter, an all-arounder, a fatt-butt, etc).

I don't encourage folks to compare themselves to anyone else. However, that's the purpose of this chart.

[Eden]

I printed out that nifty chart this morning and my husband told me that he had something better... if your CompuTrainer came with Cycling Peaks WKO + software you can analyse your workouts and it will show you where you lie in the scheme of things (cat 5/4/3 etc... ). This program is a bit more harsh than the chart above though :p

The software is not terribly intuitive though...... to get a workout in you have to drag the file onto the desktop icon for WKO+, then I had to close and save my athlete file and reopen it before the workout showed up, then there is a little magenta icon at the top of the screen that shows you your workout v/s the chart (blue of boys, change it to girls and its pink....)