Turbo trainer power meter

Cubic

Hi,

I had the opportunity to go on a turbo trainer with a power meter fitted to it the other day. Never used either of these things before. I seemed to be able to cycle at 200W pretty easily, but I have no idea if that is considered good or not. Just wondering what you think.

By the way, I've only been cycling for about 5months, weigh 13st and I the turbo trainer was a Cyclops (not sure of the model).

Thanks!

phil s

For 13stone 200w is very easy

Bronzie

Assuming the power readout from the turbo is accurate (they can vary quite a bit I believe), then the next question is how long you could hold 200W for?

If you could hold that for several hours, then it's not bad, anything less than an hour is frankly not great but the good news is that you can improve it pretty quickly (at least to start with) with some decent training.

Functional Threshold Power (roughly the sort of power output you can produce over a well-paced 1 hour time trial) is a basic gauge of your current cycling ability / potential, especially if you take your weight into account. A figure of around 3W/kg is entry level road racing ability upto around 6W/kg for pro cyclists.

pedylan

Try this link to benchmark your current and future performance.

http://www.flammerouge.je/content/3_fac ... obench.htm

Categories on the right. For an 83kg man, 2.4w/kg for 20 mins would have you at upper end of untrained.

A useful target is 4w/kg over 5 mins which would be 330w. That's middle range of intermediate in the Flamme Rouge table.

There are books on the subject............. so it's complicated!