Watts (or whats) a watt?

A watt is defined as the measurement of power. Power is an expression of work rate. These two terms have become everyday words in our house, along with “work”. Work is defined as Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something. Sounds like fun, lets do some hard work (expressed as power) to improve how many watts I can produce at a given time. In the “power world” this is usually measured as a functional threshold power (aka FTP) usually as a one hour all out effort. There are a bunch of ways to test for your FTP, but I’ve always done the 2x20min all out with a 2min easy effort in between. You take the NP (normalized Power) of that entire 42min effort and that is your FTP #. A month ago, mine was 207w (after having taken off almost two months after IM Wisconsin) I dedicated 4months of hard work to raise my FTP (with a goal of >10%, or 230w or more) this is week #4 of 16 weeks. I retested last night and I’m already at 217w, pretty much 5%. It’s amazing what you can do when you set your mind to it. I earned every one of those watts gained and frankly, I worked for them, too. I was reviewing my charts in WKO+ (the software used to analyze my power) and my power distribution chart (for the past month) shows that 30% of all my time of my bike this month has been at my FTP range…in other words. I’ve gone hard/all out for 1/3 of my time on my bike this month (including warmups and cool downs.) I was astonished to see that percentage that high, but I guess that’s how you get better. When “hard” isn’t “hard” anymore, you’re improved. I’m proud of those 10watts, and know that next motnh it will likely be less of a jump but am hopeful that come week #16 I will be at or above 230w. If I could set a longer range goal, I’d like to be at or around 245-250w by May. Let’s shoot for the stars!

My harder work is on the run. Biking is far more natural to me than running. But don’t worry…I’m working on that too. And if I remember correctly, last winter improving my FTP actually helped my running, too. It’s a long road but I have lofty goals for next year and want to see myself achieve.

I am SO thankful for my health, Happy Thanksgiving.