Power Meters / Powermeters (SRM, Powertap, Quarq, Ergomo, Vector, Stages, power2max, P2M, 4iii, InPower, Cinch)

NP is basically an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological "cost" if your power output had been perfectly constant. Certain sessions can result in an NP far higher than an average power figure that you could maintain for that time period.

What next depends on what you want. What are your aims with cycling? I don't have power goals, I have time goals and power is one part of achieving those. Do you want to progress in road racing? Again, power/FTP/w/kg will be a part of that but not the complete answer. Just like power isn't the defining metric of success in TT (thank fuck).

What do you want to do better at?

I am trying to reverse engineer an answer to that ..

I have been presented the gift of redundancy and the gardening leave begins next week; I promised myself I'll get better by doing some off bike work during this time but if the sun is shining that can fuck off. So I need a purpose. Otherwise I'll just gram #slackermiles

You have a decent road bike don't you and are reasonably small/light? Would probably suggest Road Racing in that case, as you don't need to buy a load of aero-bongo / new bike...

In which case I would look at training for fairly short efforts (couple of mins) and increasing you ability to quickly recover from those efforts, given that we don't tend to have long 10min+ climbs in many of the road races in this country.

^This will also enable you to smash repeated strava segments during the Sunday morning coffee ride and then recover in the group in time for the next one.

Yeah I think the metric we need to know Amey is how many KOM's you have and what your target is for 2015.

some real progress here ;)

for the record I have zero KOMs

Otherwise I'll just gram #slackermiles

Get yourself to the fucking alps mate.

Don't go the Alps. My Instagram feed is distressing me enough as it is.

I've got a genuine reason to want to improve my FTP - going to the Alps in a month and the chiselled whippet I'm going with crushed my last time up the big climbs. And the small ones for that matter. Don't have a powermeter though, so I guess I'm a lost cause (in this thread).

@amey Can I say 40/20.

The idea is to teach your legs to shift lactic after a supra threshold stint. So for road racing it helps with work in small pacelines. You need the base though.

My heart seems to have very suddenly gotten stronger. Either that or I've become better at coping with high HR mentally.

Tried very hard to hold 260w for 90mins, during the weekends vertical sportive (yes they made me strap a number to my bars in an annoying fashion). Managed 255w, which isnt exactly epic. But looking back at the data showed my HR to be over, what was, a well established threshold for 90mins.

Still not actually strong enough to toast bread it seems.

I've got a genuine reason to want to improve my FTP

On a 2300m climb the wattage you can put out for an hour won't help you

Z3 power, maybe.

Find the best local hill and ride up and down many many times.

Depends how big your FTP is

I'll just leave this here

get a turbo with the least amount of flywheel mass/inertia - this will simulate the low inertia effort required for long climbs

or just tell your mate not to be a dick and ride off without you.

Not that many 2,300 meter climbs in the alps...

If there are, I'd love to know which ones.

#weekendroadtrip

@amey Maybe take up golf.

Do you use training peaks? Is it public? Let me have a look at what training you do.

Cycling is the new golf

Which OTP putter?
Have you considered swing training?

How do I make the profile public? I can make certain activities public .. my username is 'ameygokarn' .. anyway you will be underwhelmed.

Sort-of greens that are handicapping you up at the moment.

@bashthebox doing consecutive, hilly tempo rides keeping cadence good and staying seated and staying away from pies.

Yes it will.

Could it be you've just hit your natural ceiling in terms of FTP?
Or, if your current training isn't bringing gains, then could it be that you're not overloading enough (combined with good rest) to bring about adaptation?

If upping W/Kg is a goal, do you have any weight to lose? I'm experimenting at the moment with seeing how high I can get my FTP, combined with losing weight until it starts to impact power. Not the easiest as I can't stand being hungry, but is looking promising. I may end up a climber, after always preferring the flat.

Anyway, all the above advice re working out what kind of racing you want to do is good.

I look on strava.
Do you do tubro sessions you don't post?

You're limited by time, so riding outdoors is a waste of time. You've got to make your time count and ride the turbo medium-hard.

FTP isn't the be all and end all racing. But at 3.5 and a light guy, you're going to struggle even if you can do decent power for short durations.

Have you done an all out 3 or 5 min effort recently? What was the w/kg?