You can also Jersey hunt on Zwift as part of your training goals 
Even in the middle of a longer lower wattage training effort, if you’re cranking out 1000+ watts, you should be able to grab some green jerseys on many of your rides.
And shorter races are definitely going to be your jam, yeah. Use CE to tell you which cat you get to race in, and if you can hang with the lead bunch till 300-400m to go, unleash that sprint and you’ll do pretty well.
I do understand what you’re saying but ts still correlated though isn’t it, since your FTP can never exceed your power at vo2max - you can certainly improve your fractional utilisation but its still capped by your vo2max power. I think after a certain point the room for improvement becomes so marginal that people switch focus to other areas that can still be improved - repeatability, time to exhaustion etc.
I don’t want to sound overly negative or sound like i’m saying training is pointless, but your potentially is massively determined by genetics, so my main message if that you’ve got to love the process - if you focus on outcome only then you don’t leave yourself with anywhere to go when you inevitably start seeing a slowdown in progress, if that makes sense?
I have never been a long distance athlete. I am and always have been a sprinter. So that’s where I should focus my efforts I think.
You surely have calibrated your cycleops hammer and updated the firmware?
Sorry for just beeing fundamental technical, but I want to exclude basic mistakes…just want to make sure your numbers are right.
I understand. I have two trainers. An H3 and an original hammer. Both were calibrated by my brother (pookiebutt on twitch). He has much more knowledge with this than me. He is level 60 I believe so… Both trainers show similar data. I have moved my setup to the garage off the carpet so I should do another calibration I think.
As I understand things, it’s confusing to say that FTP has some clear limit established by VO2Max. It’s not ‘wrong’, just confusing VO2Max is simply your oxygen uptake ability–how much O2 you can take in at your maximal performance. But what that maximal performance is will depend on your anaerobic capacity and muscular endurance. Someone with a 50 VO2Max might be turning out 300w at peak output, and will be taking in 50 ml/kg/min of O2 at 300w. But that same athlete after significant training might later be able to put out peak 400w while still taking in the same 50 ml/kg/min.
By increasing endurance and aerobic capacity, you’re effectively increasing things like the time you can spend at a given percentage of your VO2Max, and the power you can sustain with the same level of oxygen uptake. A great deal of training is about making systems more efficient–turning fat and glycogen into ATP for example. The better you can do that, the more work you can do with the same consumption of O2.
VO2Max isn’t really all that predictive of real-world performance in other than broad strokes, simply because plenty of gains can be made in aerobic and anaerobic efficiency. Recovery ability is huge–Pogacar’s coach for example says that probably his best physiological gift is not his raw VO2max but rather his ability to recovery quickly from big efforts. And that’s not a matter of VO2max either. There are general limits–if you’re at a 20 VO2Max, you’re likely not destined for World Tour Status Even untrained, people who can hit the high numbers won’t likely be that low. But among pros, from the numbers we have, there are wide variations of VO2Max. The numbers we have for pros are typically anywhere from 75-90. Lemond was said to be around 92 at his peak iirc, Froome around 86. Cav, most successful sprinter on the men’s side, is rumored to have a pretty low VO2Max by comparison to other sprinters.
What’s interesting is that genetics does determine not only what your peak VO2Max is, but also to what extent you can improve your VO2Max. Some particularly unlucky people’s VO2Max simply does not respond to training at all. Others can improve their VO2Max significant as well as improving their FTP. Oskar Svendsen went from a 74 VO2Max at 15yrs old to 96.7 at 18yrs. Highest ever recorded, afaik. He retired shortly after that, and within two years he was back to the mid 70s. Some of us will never reach anywhere near the 70s, but others might be there, but get no change from training. However–those people can still make significant improvements to their FTPs.
Is there a vo2 test on zwift or Strava? Or can these programs estimate it?
When I say I am riding on old and cheap equipment I am not kidding. I am riding this $128 new bike from Walmart until 1000km or until something major fails. Just to see if a cheap ass bike from Walmart is capable. So far so good at about 200km. I will move back to the giant revolt once I get a major failure like the bottom bracket or I hit 1000km.
Seriously this whole setup is under $500. $475 to be exact. New bike($200 with upgrades) and used trainer($275) It takes the sprints so far lol.
I feel I will get better numbers on the giant but maybe not.
If you want to progress in cycling in the way you described, you should seek the advice of a personal trainer.
The zwift forum (or any other internet forum) will never be sufficient for this kind of advice
It’s just for fun anyway. Curiosity mainly. But you never know. Most calculators say my vo2 is between 50 and 60 so nothing special.
Try bringing up that 5 minute power.
At 60kg and 175cm (I’m taller than you) I was doing 7x5min intervals around 300w fairly comfortably. Give it a month of trying to improve that and see how it affects your riding.
That training should also help raise your FTP.
Base training I used to do to raise my power back was 2x20 minutes or 2x30 minutes at a fairly moderate perfect of FTP, then gradually increasing the percent. On those intervals you don’t want to be working excessively hard, but just getting used to legs feeling uncomfortable near the end. This I typically did after injury or heavy flu (which always wrecked my fitness).
That was a simple training session a young pro rider was using and I borrowed it. He had a lot of good ideas that made the training simple.
Also try getting that weight down - fuel up for the days you are doing intensive riding, then aim for a calorie deficit on your easy days.
Easy days mean easy, that’s how you get the benefit of your training by letting the recovery happen.
Also after a very hard intervals session later after dinner I’d go out and do a very easy 20km ride outside at very slow speed on the flattest route I could find. That helps recovery.
I enjoy interval training so I will give it a try. Thanks.
I will get more serious once I get down to 165. I will stay in a carb and calorie deficit until them. Then I will start turning up the heat once I can have pizza again lol.
Great info Tom, thanks! <3
You can turn up the heat now, eat a little more AND loose fat.
Now imagine a 140lbs guy with no lifting history wants to make that lift.
Possible, but will take genetics, commitment and many years. That is your position in cycling.
You have what it takes but need time.
In the fat loss game it’s hard to factor in loads of cardio and not loose muscle. The math is much harder. I am currently eating 3200cal a day and am cutting. Any more cardio and I will need so many calories I can eat that much or afford it lol.
I most likely just have no idea what I am doing but I am better than most.
With your size and numbers (1800 peak?) go try and find a velodrome, masters cat 40-44 you would be world class competitive with those numbers (in reality its more like your 20-25s power that makes the difference rather than peak 1s, but lets assume you have a ‘normal’ sprinter power decay from that number). I would suggest its worth doing some outdoor validation, some power meters really struggle to accurately report peak power. Flat, no traffic road, no wind (tracks are ideal for this!) - try and do both directions (after a 10-15min rest) to nullify wind, max speed you can hold for 150/200m, it should be 66-70kphish with your power and a reasonable aero position on the bike, if you can’t break above 60kph, its worth looking into your power meter calibration.
Fwiw nicholas paul is a similar size to you and is not over 2kw peak power but holds the WR for the flying 200m, so please don’t be super disheartened if you end up suspecting power meter issues. lots of the ‘massive’ track sprinter power numbers you see pushed around are either 2m tall 110kg guys and/or done on janky old wattbike pros which are wildly inaccurate. Even if your sprint watts end up being a little lower than you think, you would still have a great time racing track and likely be pretty competitive (especially in the usa where track sprint is really not that developed), so make sure you go try it out!
I would love to try track cycling. Sounds fun. Unfortunately I live in Oklahoma so no track cycling. Cycling here is pretty much non existent. The closest track is a 6 hours drive 
In my area we have or had Geoff Stoker riding around, the former masters World Champion (twice I believe), he had brutal power which we all came to know when our strava segments were destroyed. 
You’d sometimes get one back and then three weeks later it would be absolutely destroyed by a huge margin. 
Fast and a good guy.
OP could definitely take a page from his book.
