Realistic Power Goals

After following this thread for sometime now, I have a question concerning w/kg improvement(FT). I would like to be able to set a realistic goal for improvement this season. Being new to power, I'm not sure what a reasonable exectation (goal) should be.

Age: 40

Weight: 81kg (Last racing weight was 73kg. I should be able to achieve this in a couple of months. I have one of those bodies that flucuates rapidly depending on activity level)

FT: 230

w/kg: 2.84

Experience: Trained and raced off/on for about five years (i.e. no coach or set program) During that time I put in 4,000 to 5,000 miles per year.

Current: Started riding again in August after five years off the bike. I currently have a coach and a workout program. On this program I am putting in 35 to 40 hrs of training per month.

If I continue with a consistent training program (35-40 hrs per month) What is a reasonable expectation for improvement (w/kg) for this season?

Assuming the program has increasing FT as a goal, I'd say +10% on watts, and -10% weight, which would take you from 230w @ 81kg (2.84 w/kg) to 253w @ 73kg (3.46 w/kg).

That estimate sounds reasonable to me, but it's a complete WAG and should be taken with a grain of salt. YMMV.

It all depends on how untrained you are at this time. I was able to raise my threshold by 25% in 2 months. I was coming off a winter of no training, and I did tempo for those 2 months.

I would say at least 10%

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"friendship, family, religion. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business!" -Mr. Burns
The faster you go, the fewer passing cars

I've been told that even "trained cyclists" (i.e., folks who've been oding structured training for years and years) can see 10% fluctuations in threshold power from the depths of the off-season to peak. Since the stuff I've seen suggests that relative improvement due to training isn't sensitive to age, I think 10% is probably an extreme lowball estimate of the improvement that should be possible.

Yes, in my case, I have been racing for 6 years. 25% fluctuations are very possible for "seasoned" riders. So for a beginner, they can make huge improvements if they train properly.

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"friendship, family, religion. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business!" -Mr. Burns
The faster you go, the fewer passing cars

Really? A seasoned rider who can produce, say 300w at FT during the race season, detrains to 225w FT during the off-season?

Geez, no wonder so many riders feel the need to go through LSD periods.

I didn't say it was the correct way to train. All I said was that it is possible.

Gee, what do you know? Another silly argument on cyclingforums.com

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"friendship, family, religion. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business!" -Mr. Burns
The faster you go, the fewer passing cars

Sorry, I wasn't criticizing. It surprised me that it even *could* happen within the span of a few months.

We're going to have to really pick it up if we want to meet the new standards.

The trained state of endurance athletes is extremely fragile. More so than that of, say, power or skill athletes. If you really want to scare yourself, check out http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/coach...1/rundell.htm:

"Coyle, Martin, and Holloszy (1984) studied endurance athletes who had been training for 10 years. VO2max decreased by 7, 13, and 15 percent after 12, 56, and 84 days. Stroke volume decreased by 11% after 12 days."

I'm rooting for a showdown between acoggan and RDO: the former, saying mid-L2 to L4 all do the same stuff, the latter, anything under L4 is big waste o' time! Come on, guys! Let's get out the whiffle bats and go at it old skool!

Sigh. RDO is probably too smart by half to second-guess Andy about this stuff, though. It would have high entertainment value, though, you must admit.

Dang!

*Most* of us seem to fit into that category, too. Too bad....

I want a seat in the bleachers. I'll take Andy.

Actually, to be technically correct, I feel that it is L4-L7 time that results in an increase in sustainable power. Like all cyclists, I end up with big chunks of L1-L3 time, I just figure it's good for increasing endurance but not sustainable power. And, I still want to be in the bleachers.

Sounds very plausible. After building up to what was my highest 3 month TSS load over approximately three months (10/15 - 1/20) (I'm not giving you hard-corers the TSS numbers - you guys would laugh ), I took a ten day break before my new triathlon season started. Just a chance to give my body a good full rest before the multi-sport training kicks into gear again and finally (hopefully) shake off this stupid lingering cold and cough. I did absolutely no workouts during those ten days.

When I got on my trainer yesterday, as rested as I felt, there would have been no way that I could have completed my usual 2x20 intervals (well, I'm more like 2x18 or 3x10) - perceived exertion was higher, breathing was harder and heart-rate was higher from warm-up through 45 minutes of a tempo ride and cool-down. I was definitely already slipping down the slopes of detraining in just ten days.

Not that I'm trying to present myself as an exceptionally-trained endurance athlete specimen or implying that taking the break was bad - just confirming that the "trained state of endurance athletes is extremely fragile" observation seems to be dead on from personal experience.

Now don't get me started on what not swimming for 4 months has done to my swimming form...

Berend

The link to the study wouldn't work for me, but I would imagine that the more finely honed your fitness is, the more fragile it would be. Apparently, my fitness is more like a rubber mallet than Spanish steel, because it doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as those numbers might suggest. I'd guess <5% drop from a 2-week layoff, which would be recovered pretty quickly as well once training was resumed.

But, back to the topic at hand. I say 10%, do I hear 15%? 20%?

Oopsy, try it without the colon: link.

And yes, the first thing to go in any athlete (including, like, soccer players and stuff) appears to be VO2Max. From this other page, " the reduction in aerobic adaptation is considerably greater than for the other performance capacities." The other performance capabilities include things that cyclists mostly don't care about, like strength and flexibility, but also include peripheral "threshold-type" adaptations ("When swimmers stop training there is no change in their muscle glycolytic enzymes (phosphoralase and PFK) for at least four weeks. On the other hand, the oxidative energy system declines much more rapidly. This explains why sprint times are virtually unaffected by brief lay-offs (up to a month) but endurance performances decline significantly within a period as short as two weeks.". )

Gosh, I'm really pushing this "fair use" idea; have I mentioned how insanely great Coaching Science Abstracts is lately?
I think we'd have to put some kind of time scale in place. I think 10% is obviously doable, say, in the 2006 season. Given any amount of time and training? I think it probably depends on genetics, but I would think 20% from "almost totally untrained" to "close to maximal genetic potential" would be pretty low. I know RDO has improved his threshold by more than 20% in the last year...