Strava

Where the watts go

Watts per heartbeat falls across every ride — but not for the reason you'd expect. Your hard rides hold up better than your easy ones, because on an easy ride you open at tempo power and spend the next ten miles settling back down.

What this is for

Set 23 Sep 2026. Everything else on the page derives from these.

1 · Consistency
Ride for years without breaking. Every previous run has ended in a soft-tissue injury and a reset. This outranks the other four — when two conflict, this wins.
2 · Heat and gut
Heat illness golfing repeatedly this year, from not being able to eat or drink while moving. Train the gut on the bike, where intake is measurable. A doctor sees the heat episodes first.
3 · Strong rider
Punch over a climb, jump away on the flat, hold the gap, finish with a kick. Cat 4/5 capability, raced or not. A rouleur with a puncheur’s finish — 79 kg on rolling ground, where absolute watts beat watts per kilo.
4 · The curve
Shift it right and flatter, not steeper. Steeper is the beginner shape, which is what the data shows. Sprint work stays a small weekly dose, never a focus.
5 · Everything else
Competitive golf, lifting, a lot of skiing, a full-time job. Three rides with an optional fourth is the ceiling, not a floor.

Targets

Where you are, March 2027, and what Cat 5 asks for. The last column is two to four years out.

MeasureNowMar 2027 Cat 5 readyWhy it is on the list
Weeks unbroken—26— Goal 1. Nothing else matters if this fails.
Longest gap—under 6 days— Goal 1. A short ride keeps the chain; a skipped one does not.
FTP185–200 W255–280 W The platform everything else sits on.
5-min power230–240 W300–330 W Goal 3. The attack itself.
Sprint, 5 s900–950 W1,100 W+ Goal 3. The kick that makes a split stick. Read it loosely — a single meter spike can set a 5-second number.
Sprint, 30 s470–500 W600–630 W Goal 3. The honest sprint figure, and the one that actually drops a wheel — a jump long enough to open real daylight.
1-min power380–400 W450 W+ Goal 3. What the local climbs actually ask for — Punkatasset and Pantry Road are 60–90 seconds.
20 min ÷ 60 minunder 125%under 112% Goal 4. The flatness of the right-hand end. The single best measure of the engine.
Decouplingunder 8%under 5% Durability. Whether the punch is still there at mile 30.
Cadence70 rpm82–8585–90 Serves goals 1 and 4 at once: less force per stroke through the knee, and less of the big-gear bias.
Carbs on the bikenone60 g/hour90 g/hour Goal 2. The gut is the thing being trained, not just the legs.
Longest ride50 mi+60–80 mi Grows by time, never by watts.
Repeatabilityuntestedeffort 4 within 10% of effort 1— Goal 3. Unmeasured, because solo endurance rides never ask for it. Test in spring: 4 × 90 s hard, 60 s between.
The gap to Category 5 is roughly 100 W of FTP. At a sane rate of building that is two to four years, and the whole design is aimed at still being here for year two. Weight is not a lever being pulled: cutting calories during a build works against goal 2 and raises the injury risk in goal 1.