Friday, 20 May 2011

Power to Weight Ratio

One of the many essential measures of a riders ability is their power to weight ratio. (Actually a lot of this sort of stuff is meaningless, but I like it !?!)

In the kit car world people like to aim for 400 BHP per metric tonne. My Westfield is probably about 320 to 340.

In the bike world, a good figure is 4 Watts per kg.  This is what I am aiming for.
A riders power output is a very variable thing. I can peak at over 600watts, just for a very short time, but 350ish for a couple of minutes and can only hold 270ish for an hour (my Functional Threshold Power).
Generally people quote their 5min wattage for the power to weight ratio figures. These figures are all a bit vague and I'm can't really claim that I've given it an all-out effort to measure them at any point. They are just taken from various turbo sessions.

On the other side of the equation, my weight is falling. From the rugby friendly 92kg last November to 83kg now. This gives my current power to weight ratio as about 3.8 watts/Kg

Pretty happy with that, but I'm going to continue with the salads and hope to hit 80kg and 350+ watts. by Etape time.

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