Will I be fast?

This is the essential question that every pretend bike racer must dwell upon. Will the hours of riding, resting and gratuitous man-scaping bear the sweet fruit of bike-based speed? Thanks to the development of nearly oppressive biometric measuring devices, a lot of the guesswork about one’s potential mightiness can be removed.

Take me, for instance, thanks to modern technology, I can monitor the power output of every single pedal stroke on my rides. I record every thump of my heart both on and off the bike (I use a Garmin Fenix watch with a wrist monitor to record my off-bike heart rate, I wear it all day, and it has turned me into a competitive sleeper because I really am quite pathetic.). My Wahoo unit tracks my speed, distance, elevation and uploads every twist and turn I take on my jaunts into the wilds of Northern Jersey. I weigh myself first thing every morning and I’m flirting with the concept of archiving jars of my urine—actually that’s not true, a whizz-jar archive would be a step too far. I’d run out of storage space in the basement far too quickly to be able to build a proper urine chronology.

The reason for all this obsessive data collection is to help answer that nagging question: will I be fast? Here’s what I know.  My FTP (FTP stands for “functional threshold power”, which is theoretically the highest power you can hold for an hour. Bike people measure mightiness in power via watts, which are measured via strain gauges that quantify how hard you are pedaling. FTP and watts explanations are also nature’s signals for potential mates to just “back away”.) is currently 266 watts. I know this number because I took a FTP test on Zwift that involved riding really hard, cursing and some weeping.

The good news is that my FTP number hasn’t dropped precipitously. So I’m maintaining fitness as I slowly become “cremation ready”. My FTP has hovered around 270 watts for the past decade or so, my WTF number (which measures why I continue to care about FTP) might be on the long term decline though, because training 10-12 hours a week to get my ass kicked is probably a diminishing return when it comes to mental health.

Enough typing, are you fast?

Is 266 watts fast? Lord no! At my normal weight of 148 pounds (weight, along with FTP are two numbers that bike racers love to slip into conversations—in fact I’m doing it RIGHT NOW!), that comes to 3.96 watts per kilogram. (Watts per kilograms another bike metric we slip in there also, I’m two for two here) What does that number mean? It means that I’m faster than nearly everyone that rides a bike and I’m slower than anyone that is good at riding bikes. An exceptional rider will have a FTP of 5 or above, with pros hitting 6 watts per kilogram. Simply put, my 3.96 number will make it possible for me to spectate as much more talented riders pedal away when races get difficult.

And I am fine with that. Until my WTF numbers start to get out of hand, then I’ll start work on a larger space for my whizz-jar archive.