Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Watts up

As part of the winter training I have been attending Computrainer classes twice a week. Besides me, there are about six others in the classes. We all do the same basic workout on a particular evening but everybody's workout is different based on their power output.

Without trying to brag, my numbers are higher than the others in the class. I am the only one that races regularly so I guess it would be normal for my numbers to be higher. A few others do participate in triathlons and a few others might do the occasional race and I'm not sure about a couple of the other people. They might just like to ride and want to train.

Regardless of their goals, everyone's power goals are posted on the wall in front of them. When I show up for class I cannot help but look at what others are doing and compare the differences in people. Last night, for instance, we had to do a series of intervals well above our lactate threshold. I looked at one person and, at that point in the workout, they were being asked to do 170 watts and I was expected to do 295 watts. Those 170 watts are probably a pretty tough thing for them to do, so I don't mock them. It's just curious to me how a wattage, which one person can easily cruise at, can be the upper limits of another.

They don't appear to have a gearing that is much different than me. Do they just not use a large number of the gears on their bike, much like I rarely get in a 53x12 or 13? If you push a certain sized gear at any kind of decent cadence you will roughly create a certain wattage, correct? For instance, if both I and a 120 lb. woman used a 53x16 at 90rpm shouldn't our power be somewhat similar?

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