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NP is the 4th root of the mean of the 4th power of your ride (after a 30s smoothing is applied). It's a way to account for the fact that (eg) doing alternate minutes at 100 and 300W is a lot harder than doing a steady 200W. The average power is the same but the normalised power of the former is higher.
💨 is the sound of that explanation whizzing over my head lol. But thank you - I’ll try and get my head round it.
Thanks - that seems like a great article.
I’m taking away the following basic statement about it:
“To put it another way, average power is a simple reflection of what you actually did during a ride, including coasting. Normalized Power approximates what you could have done with that same level of effort, had you ridden at a perfectly steady pace. While this is a bit of a simplification and is not true for every athlete or circumstance, it’s a good way to conceptualize what Normalized Power represents”.
Now going to go back and have a look at all my TR rides out of curiosity
know riding with Weeksy a few months ago, he was astonished when I told him how many watts he must have been doing as we rode up a hill alongside each other.
I was impressed i got to 3 figures 🙂
I found a watt 😂
just chugging through the consistency last week, 1x 2hr day split into 2 1hr Z2, 3x Z2 1hr days and 1x VO2 Intervals day through half term, continued naff weather, away during the week and then away over the weekend, just over 6hrs for the week, about all I could have done
had drifted into "fresh" on intervals, however the last 2/3 days haven't been "rest" with long walks with the lads, had time for a short session today, so tried the Innsbruck KOM on Zwift, limited warm up then 295w for 20m
FTP - 279 to 280w @ 79.35kg so 3.53w/kg (although intervals gives me +3 to 282w based on 293w for 23 minutes)
very very warm in my room even with the wahoo fan on 100%
forecast for the week seems to have taken a nosedive, however, next 2x look alright, time to venture back outdoors, I'd take Kryton's +10% outdoor FTP increase, however mine seems to track almost identical
Some people say NP is an ego-boosting made up number 🤣 (well, former insanely fast forumite MrBlobby in particular).
Whilst it is a pretty good approximation of the steady state power equivalent you may have done, it an important to realise its limitations.
Your kcals burned will only ever be your AP not your NP. Likewise your speed will only pertain to your AP not your NP.
I kind of use it the other way around. Whatever average power I ‘know’ I can do for say 3hrs of steady state endurance/tempo riding, I then know I’ll be able to do NP for the same duration.
For example, let’s say you can do a 3hr ride solo at 180w and be nicely gassed at the end.
If you then head out with your mates for 3hrs and the first 30 minutes is 240np- you know you’re going too hard and so can back off before you blow up 🤣
Yesterday, I was keeping an eye on it but because we started out fairly easily- I was well within my suspected limits so felt able to push harder and harder right to the end without fear of going pop (kind of like using your trip meter to monitor your fuel level in your car).
I use NP as a comparator if I've been doing intervals outside. I tend to do intervals outside by feel and looking at NP vs Average for an interval lets me know if I paced the interval OK. If they're wildly different I might look at the power trace to see how I could have paced it better.
I found my hill for the 8min threshold intervals today and took the scenic route home afterwards. Means I have a bit of work to catch up on this evening but totally worth it for my first ride of the year without legwarmers. The people of Inverness and Nairnside have never seen a gun* show like it.
*leg gun**
**I moved to the only place in the UK where my complexion could be considered towards the swarthier end of the scale.
This is all making me want a power meter more and more.
aaaaaand we've been outdoors, so nice to be back out, shorts/short sleeves for 3 days, but it looks like back to indoors as winter is back as of tomorrow 😩 it's been windy as hell though!
Tuesday - 2hr 54m - 93.8km - 217w NP
Wednesday - 2hr 10m - 68.8km - 198w NP
Thursday - 2hr 52m - 85.1km - 195w NP
mostly in Z2 heart rate zone, just ticking along getting some actual outdoor miles in the legs
tried a 8.6km Strava segment on Tuesday 10km in thought the wind would help on part of it (circular loop), it didn't, did 298w for just over 13 mins, 30 seconds better than I've done previously, still 22 seconds short, but I don't think the wind was particularly helpful, felt strong though
probably going to have a day off, then finish the week strong then have a bit of a deload week while I crack on with an assignment thats due, probably due an easier week
obligatory summer bike pic
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Wow that bike looks tidy! What is it?
Some decent mileage there and quite disciplined in terms of pace for the most part by the sounds of it.
Awesome stuff Dirtyrider 👏🏻 well done!
What Varia mount is that? 🧐
@joebristol - Cannondale Systemsix
@crosshair - Raceware Direct for Specialized Saddles, no Airtag though
Ah, I should probably have guessed that from the wheels. Not seen one in that colour scheme before - looks lush
it was the base model, they reduced them to £1999.95 in late 2019, picked it up from rutland cycling, the only thing that survived is the frame, that's all that was ever going to though, think it was ultegra mechanical, now looking back I should have bought a shed full, different times pre pandemic 😷, ridiculous price looking back
was this one
https://99spokes.com/en-GB/bikes/cannondale/2019/systemsix-carbon-ultegra
I just stripped it and chucked on a top end groupset at it, I'm not sure what I'd ever change it for
Looks great with the deep section wheels you added - looked a bit odd with the shallow rims it came with
Lovely looking bike!
did 298w for just over 13 mins
im in a downward spiral here. My ear infection appears to be clearing now but very slowly, but I couldn’t hold that (it’s 4wkg for me) for more than one of the six 2 min intervals I had prescribed last night. I’m really trying not to let it affect my mental state for Sundays race, but I’m starting to have bad feelings about it. It makes me even more confused about this disparity between my indoor & outdoor power having managed 24 x 1 min at 300w the same time last week - both PM’s had been calibrated.
I also now have to reevaluate my diet after weighing in at 73kg this morning, any more loss would be too much, at least I can stuff the carbs a bit before Sunday without worry!
I wish I weighed 73kgs…this morning I’m at 76.7 again. Seem to fluctuate up and down a bit but I need to clean my diet up to get sub 76kgs again. Think I’m going to tick along as I am for the rest of April then make some better diet choices for May.
I wish I was 73 and not 95 as I head round 12,000ft of off road climbing at Kielder tomorrow 🤣 After tour of Cambridgeshire I think I need to refocus for a couple of months.
That sounds a bit emotional - although I’ve never really had a big day of road climbing. I know 30km and 1450m of climbing off road is a bit brutal (my legs were aching on the drive home from Cwmcarn / Risca after that effort) but I’m not sure where I’d find similar on road riding. I think my biggest challenge would be saddle soreness as I’m not used to sitting on the saddle for more than 2-3 hours regularly.
I’m quite lucky with that. I had a bit of hot-foot last year but butt was fine 🤣 🍑
on the weightloss thing, I sort of know where you are coming from, how much is too much to lose? I've been using myfitnesspal to track, now I still love a drink on an evening, or over lunch, and there is days I click in and don't log, such as the weekend away with the boys, pizza, fish & chips, ice cream, no tracking, or midweek last week, saw limp bizkit in Manchester, plenty of beers, so I'd suggest that is a healthy relationship with weightloss
yet if you met me after Christmas, I don't think anyone would describe me as fat, or even overweight (maybe a societal problem?) yet I got an alert of myfitnesspal today saying "congrats, you logged in 86 days in a row" and I'm down 10.4kg from 25/1
🤷♂️
10.4kgs off since end of January is immensely impressive!
Away from training numbers I popped to Rowberrow on the Mendips for a quick blip about this avo. 1.5 hours ish of riding / 515m of climbing / 12.5kms. Pretty much straight up - straight down - straight up - straight down - straight up - straight down. Not much along.
Pb’d everywhere up and down - just felt fast everywhere. All the work is definitely paying off. Trails were mostly dry and grippy with the occasional puddle / muddy bit - I think it’ll be rekon time to replace the dhr2 soon on the back for some more speed.
I feel like I haven't trained for ages this morning 🤣
Last week I raced at Hillingdon on Tuesday. The numbers I got from it were meh but it was nice to get some high intensity in. It's not often I see 900w+ twenty times in a 40 min ride.
Then I just did an easy spin on Wednesday and a quick shake down on arrival at Kielder on Friday before my near 10hr ride at Dirty Reiver on Saturday. Then I've had two days off 😴
I feel itching to get back at it now. The chaingang is heading out tonight, likely with small numbers but should be a chance to churn out some good power- albeit not in any kind of predictable way. I had better ride at least an hour there I think to make sure I wake the legs up!
I'm thinking of trying something 'big' on Sunday as a real test of fitness but I may keep the suspense going on that one in case it doesn't pan out 🤣
ride to Goring, jump the train to Chippenham, ride back on Ridgeway... it's a nice little jaunt.
What, on Saturday as a warm up for what I want to do on Sunday? 😉
lol i don't know what your Sunday plan is 🙂
Harder than that 🤣
It will probably impress nobody but I'm already getting butterflies thinking about it 🤣
It will probably impress nobody
Nah, don't be so harsh, your efforts and dedication are pretty impressive !
What’s this Sunday plan then? Sounds a biggy…
Road….
Flat….
Not all Z2…..
Something I admire when I see other folks on my Strava feed doing it
🤐 🤣🤣🤣
I just bought some cheap 'smart' scales so I could upload my weight automatically and it could be available to my mates. Same principle as Weight Watchers public weigh-in.
Also, had an interesting ride last week. The general advice seems to be that your fitness peaks a few days after your last ride, however I've always found better gains from having a week or more off the bike. I hadn't ridden for two weeks, then went out for a spin, but I felt good and smashed a PB on my local flat sprint segment. The most interesting part is that my max HR was way higher than it usually is doing the same thing. It was 190, which I haven't seen for many years. I put this down to being very well recovered.
Your high heart rate after a few days of no exercise may well be a reduction in blood volume see Blood volume
Something I admire when I see other folks on my Strava feed doing it
No matter what you do you won't look as awesome as me 😄😄😄😜😜😜
Your high heart rate after a few days of no exercise may well be a reduction in blood volume see Blood volume
Interesting article - thanks for sharing.
Had a decent few weeks on the bike. FTP up to 270 today giving me 3.6w/kg. Hopefully build on this and get it a bit higher still.
Chainy tonight. Me plus three others. Did an hour on the way there to warm up and then the fast loop was 23.3 miles in an hour dead.
I tried to make it good training by doing two minute pulls (we’d not specified how long to stay on the front but around a minute or so each) and then the next guy in rotation was strong so I was then clinging on for dear life for the next couple of minutes too. I hit vo2 max a couple of times during his pulls by doing it that way.
I did 283w average / 308w normalised which was okay considering I could still feel Dirty Reiver in my legs. I was doing 2 minutes at about 370w for my pulls.
Just to maybe help Kryton a little, (as I guess we often edit out the bad bits on social media) I will add that I had a minor breakdown at the end 🤣
We were all discussing power etc and I realised how insanely stupid it is trying to be fast and fat. It took me at least 40 more watts than everyone else to do the same speed. And yet I can’t get myself to start a diet. The days I try and start and fire up MyFitnessPal- it has the opposite effect and makes me binge eat!
I don’t even care about getting back to my lightest- I’m only talking about maybe 3-4kg but I can’t even get myself started.
Anyway, although my best mate Rich and another guy were heading the same way, and normally we chat and chill, I just sat on the front and drilled it all the way home out of disgust with myself 🤣
Still- I enjoyed the ride. Riding fast is fun, and going hard releases endorphins regardless of my weight hang ups 🤣
All told it was 281np for over 2hrs.
keep going dander 😎
sounds like a tough session crossrider, reiver was only 3 days ago
I found a new graph on intervals, not sure how it's populated though, I know I spent long periods of the last few years without a hrm, however it's captured some data, all of these are at 144bpm
2019 - 170w
2020 - 140w
2021 - 120w
2022 - 136w
2023 - 200w
now the top end gives better figures for some years, but I spent a lot of the time doing smashfests everywhere, and zero base, whereas this year I'm 80/100 hours ytd in Z2, 2019 which has the second best figure up there, I did 12/79hrs total year in Z2, and that will have been accumulated along the way
So crazy figures on here - I know I’m a chunk lower but not sure how this works out vs what I’m doing when out on the bike rather than the turbo. Assiomas should arrive this week - but I need to reassemble and bleed my front brake as it randomly started leaking. So not sure when I’ll actually get to test them out yet.
Did a spontaneous / ad-hoc pump track session on my bmx last night - hadn’t ridden it for months due to the bad weather. Definitely feel punchier on a sprint and can go for longer than last time I rode it. Loving how the turbo fitness is affecting all my outdoors riding in a good way. Strava thinks I burned 425 calories in about 25 minutes of actual ride time - that sounds a bit toppish but I am 0.6kg lighter this morning than yesterday morning 🤷♂️
@joebristol always worth remembering that comparing your numbers to someone else is rarely useful. There's so many varibles between your legs and the number on the head unit (weight, CdA, type of power meter, position of power meter etc) that it can get quite misleading. Always best to focus on your own numbers in my experience.
@crosshair it sounds like you don't have a good relationship with MyFitnessPal. I know that there are other services that take a more psychological approach to weight loss - maybe investigating them might be a bit more sustainable for you? I think one of them is called noom but I have no idea how good it is or how much it costs. Or enjoy your body the way it is of course!
@stevious - agree - it’s just curiosity as much as anything else really. Especially interested to see if I do a sprint what sort of figures I’m putting out really.
I think I’m middling on weight - I’m not full on competitive roadie light, but on the flip side vs general population Im probably about average for my height.
Plus ftp obviously means different things depending on what method to calculate it etc etc.
I tried my fitness pal and hated it for some reason. Get on better with ‘Lose It’ although it’s a similar kind of thing. They’re in the process of ruining it with spam adverts unless you pay for it. Putting up with it for now but will see how that goes.
I quite enjoy logging my calories and exercise and aiming for a target of net 1700 calories. Then occasionally I’ll just have a blow out weekend if I’ve got something on - then get back to it during the week. Broadly working well for me for the most part.
Thanks @stevious
I used to get good results with it but it seems to get harder and harder to achieve any kind of quick result to then inspire me to carry on long enough for it to become habit these days.
My weight has remained remarkably consistent since January. I weighed myself before and after my century the other weekend to see how good my hydration was and I was heavier afterwards by almost the exact amount I’d drunk 🤣
There’s also the training aspect- I feel amazing on the bike almost all the time nowadays by not being in a deficit.
I think it was just a reality check the other night that I couldn’t ride everyone off of my wheel 🤣
What's the general consensus here on method of calculating FTP?
Is it better to do 75% of a ramp test value, or 95% of a 20 minute effort, or is it all unreliable compared to an actual 1 hour effort?
Personally, I subscribe to the 20 minute method without ergo, as I think it is more realistically covering both the mental and physical aspects of pacing out a real 1hr effort compared to an ergo'd ramp test, but similarly, I don't have the time or inclination to do 1hr tests.
Last time I was over 4W/kg was back in 2019 - contemplating whether I can get back up to that level when I am now in my 40's.
I do ramp tests on trainerroad - but have used the AI feature more recently. Seems fairly accurate going by how the subsequent workouts have felt. I do think about doing a 20 minute test for verification, or as a standalone workout, but bottle it!
@Twisty I honestly don’t think it matters. Choose your ‘favourite’ and execute it as reliably as possible and it will be close enough.
Or just do an all out 3 minute effort and let any of the software guess for you.
DrISM doesn’t even believe there is a ‘threshold’ anyway 🤣
I’ve done 2x8, the 20 min test, zwift and TR ramp tests and just used my zwift race figure before now over the years and it’s all good enough to train with.
Also- any of the long form FTP tests need proper pacing. If you can pace an FTP test properly, I’d argue you already know it well enough to train with 💡 🤯 👳🏻♂️ 🤣