Since Allison wasn't riding her bike today at lunch I stole her Power Tap hub. I have never done any sort of testing before and was curious as to what kind of power numbers I could make.
I rode my normal lunch route and put in a few hard efforts including one seriously hard sprint.
What did I learn?
Seated climbing: I put in a bit of an effort on a short climb and averaged 440w for 30 seconds.
Extended climbing: The only real climb on the route took 5.5 minutes. I didn't go super hard for steady state, but put in three hard out of the saddle efforts. I did 327 watts average with a max of 972 watts. HR averaged 166 which is below threshold.
Flat TT: I put in one short sustained effort on the flats after the climb. In 2.5 minutes I sustained an average of 294 watts (220min/365max). I wasn't going all out as I was towing one of the guys from work in a headwind and didn't want to drop him.
Flat sprint: After descending the climb mentioned above the road levels out and I did an all out sprint on the flat. The data says that it was a 13 second sprint, 950w average, 1163 peak with a peak velocity of 43.2 mph.
Uphill sprint: At the end of the 1hr ride there is a little hill (6.5% for 800ft) and I decided to sprint it to see what happens. It took me 23 seconds to climb, averaging 825 watts, peak of 1097 watts. My speed peaked at the midpoint at 25 mph.
Of course I don't have much data on my sustained power output and I won't get it any time soon (Allison doesn't share well) but I think I make a better sprinter than anything else. I know what I need to work on (didn't need a PT for that) but in the end I probably won't ever be able to keep up with guys much smaller than me that put out great sustained power. WKO+ says that I line up with "Moderate/CAT4" with my 5 second and 5 minute mean maximal power which sounds about right.
In any case, it was neat to geek out on some numbers. Now I have some numbers to back up what I thought my strengths were. I have a lot of work ahead of me to try and keep up with the fast CAT 1 MTB guys like James. Maybe this tiny amount of data will help me out... probably not. :)
So Happy Its Thursday! :)
3 comments:
Get this guy signed up for some crits! My power profile is about the opposite - 20 minute and 5 minute power are up there in Cat2/Cat3 territory but my 5s sprint is on border of Cat5/Untrained ... I'm all slow twitch!
Yeah the power tap is a really fun tool. Not sure if its made me faster but definitely more aware. You've gotta swipe Allison's wheel again and do a 20 minute test .. thats the real number to track for mtb racing.
should get you in the velodrome or something so you can shine on sprinter! =)
Nice Justin! I think that is somewhat typical for mtb racing. Sprints up and out of the saddle and then short recoveries.... THAT is how you dropped me so fast in big bear ;-)
As everyone states mtb is A LOT about skills on the trail and we know you have that down so with this power and working on those limiters your going to be dropping more and more suckers on the climbs !
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