The problem with Watts at a certain speed figures is that they seem impressive, but unreality they are not.
Firstly, I cannot pedal at 50 Kmh, which already puts those numbers beyond my reach. I can pedal at 40 Kmh for short distances, maybe up to 5 Km on a good day and I can definitely pedal at 30 Kmh almost indefinitively given no wind and a flat road in good conditions. So those 15 Watts are more like 3 Watts in my real world. Ok, I've got 3 watts for free, which is somewhere between 1-2 % of the power I require to keep that speed... or let's put it in another way, how much faster can I go with 3 extra Watt?
Using one of those power calculators I get something in the range of 0.1 to 0.2 Kmh faster. So in an hour I can go roughly 150 metres further. A quantity that would be already meaningless in an hour record attempt effort, probably superseded by a long mile by barometric air pressure on the day... how meaningful could it be in a 10 miles time trial context? Not very meaningful either... probably looking at finishing 70 metres ahead, which is what? 7 seconds or so?
The problem with Watts at a certain speed figures is that they seem impressive, but unreality they are not.
Firstly, I cannot pedal at 50 Kmh, which already puts those numbers beyond my reach. I can pedal at 40 Kmh for short distances, maybe up to 5 Km on a good day and I can definitely pedal at 30 Kmh almost indefinitively given no wind and a flat road in good conditions. So those 15 Watts are more like 3 Watts in my real world. Ok, I've got 3 watts for free, which is somewhere between 1-2 % of the power I require to keep that speed... or let's put it in another way, how much faster can I go with 3 extra Watt?
Using one of those power calculators I get something in the range of 0.1 to 0.2 Kmh faster. So in an hour I can go roughly 150 metres further. A quantity that would be already meaningless in an hour record attempt effort, probably superseded by a long mile by barometric air pressure on the day... how meaningful could it be in a 10 miles time trial context? Not very meaningful either... probably looking at finishing 70 metres ahead, which is what? 7 seconds or so?
Numbers numbers... :-/