What with the number of topics currently on the subjects of FTP and W/Kg,
and how people are interested in their metrics vs others, me included, what do people think about whether there was a pinned topic that includes a couple of Trainerroad user percentage tables?
One for FTP, in say 10W increments, and another for W/Kg, say in 0.10 increments, with a breakdown of either what % or how many Trainerroad subscribers / users are at each level so you can see how you measure up with everyone else.
Iām not overly fussed about seeing a league table showing what position I am in, that would be too demoralising / depressing, and I know I can see my own personal increases, but a scaled chart showing what % of people are at 250W vs 260W vs 270W etc, and 3W/Kg vs 3.1W/Kg vs 3.2W/Kg etc, may be of interest to some if you knew you were climbing up against other users, or you were say in the top 50% last year but in the top 40% this year.
It goes without saying, this would need the input from Trainerroad and the tables wouldnāt use live data, but it could be a snapshot at a point in time with say quarterly updates?
I donāt see the upside, but I can see the downside of impacting peopleās confidence.
People focus on the numbers too much already. Itās very useful, but training and racing is about much more.
FTP shouldnāt really be compared between people in my opinion; different meters, different environments, different protocolsā¦itās good to measure your own progression and racing, but numbers between two different people could easily be 10% out.
I canāt imagine TR will release this data and Iām not sure how motivating it would be to me. Weāre always told that FTP is just a number and that w/kg doesnāt tell the whole story. I can track my improvements in relation to my own history.
That said, it would be really interesting to see TRās dataset just out of curiosity
Some people might get a kick out of seeing which centile theyāre in for either metric but itās unlikely to help anyone in their training motivation.
This sounds like a can of worms to me. Data with very little likelihood of providing any useful direction or help in setting training goals.
As others said, I see it potentially derailing people in shooting for targets that are not appropriate or attainable. A pure power or W/kg value doesnāt give any guidance. It is also only a single data point.
Things like power curves and PRās give way more of a picture and context to potential performance (even though that leaves out massive elements of what leads to successful performances in our related events). And even that is still insufficient really.
What could be useful is a summary of habits and training choices that correlates to meaningful increases in fitness at those broader power levels (not just FTP or W/kg).
Hints from Nate indicate they may be working on things like that to present for us. I see that type of info as being much more helpful than a simple population distribution suggested here.
I agree that providing this information is not actionable to most people and would likely be demotivating. If people are curious enough, there are plenty of tables out there for people to self measure against and if you just look for Andrew Cogganās activity on any of the major forums, you can find the information.
TrainerRoadās user population is also a very shifted data set; what may be āaverageā among TR is likely far to the right of the median in a normal cycling population.
Totally agree. Iāve tossed around the idea of grass-roots coaching (very lightly, mind you, my one-armed pull up record is still zero!) but find it completely alien as to how one would train without power. There seems to be a very real funā>seriousness shift once a PM becomes involved (e.g. user percentage tables).
You want people to enjoy riding their bike, but also make them better at riding a bike so they can enjoy it even more. As @stevemz says, so much data is not actionable and demotivating, thus having the opposite effect of having fun on the bike.
If all you are going to do is virtual indoor training then join one of the virtual indoor training services which allows you to compete against other people while riding. Much more fun than a spreadsheet competition.
Another issue with this is the proportion of TR users who use virtual power. Those numbers will not be comparable to everyone else but will be on an individual basis given a consistent setup.
The thought was never to provide a detailed analysis and to be too serious, it was just to show a high level view of FTP, W/Kg, as well as some other fields of say, gender, age groups, who use virtual power vs those who donāt, and time people start there workouts at, in a chart / graph forms.
Non of the above is going to effect my training, nor is it intended.
Whilst @AndyGajda says āNo good will come of thisā¦ā, I donāt see any harm in it either. After all it is just trivia.
I am still male, in my 40s, use virtual power, and start my workouts between 0500hrs and 0600hrs. But nonetheless, to me, Iād still be interested to know that there are 0.01% of users rocking Trainerroad in their 80s and 90s, or 3 times the amount of people start there workouts at 1800hrs than 0500hrs when I do.
Super good point I never even considered. Then include the fact that many smart and power devices are also know to be inaccurate (Tacx Vortex, many older Elite trainers) and you would have very questionable ādataā in some cases.
Those devices can all work, but the delta in change is what must be watched, not the actual value, as those may be very misleading.
I would also second @JoeX and add that each user has their specific discipline within the sport. They are training for a specificity that sometimes wonāt translate to another user purely based on circumstance. I fear it would over complicate the process seeing as though seasons change as do FTPs and w/kg.
Those if you who also use Garmin connect can see some of this data in the mobile app. Itās in no way helpful in my experience though can be curious to look at.
Obviously itās a wider net than the TR user net.
Feels kind of like an ego check for everyone - nothing positive out of it in my opinion.
There might be some interesting (in a fun fact sense of the word) cuts of the data around percentage of users riding at different times, most popular workouts, average % change in FTP graphed over duration of subscription, most popular plans by type and volume, etcā¦
Not sure anything there is worth development time (still some missing features from the app that are more important in my opinion) but presumably you could throw someone against the database and get that data pretty easily, particularly if you were just updating it quarterly
I do occasionally look at TrainingPeaks graph that ranks your 5 sec / 1 min / etc power levels into Cat 5 / Cat 4 / etc. The TP site is unresponsive right now, canāt take a screenshot.
Xert has a fun spider graph, I took the summer off and early into base training right now. Here is my spider graph:
Shows progress or in my case what happens when you spend a whole calendar year rehabilitating. Pretty easy to see short efforts are my limiter. Iāve only been cycling for 3 years, my 2019 goal is to get solidly in Cat 5.
