The Bell curve of cylists - how fast are the average TR users?

Moar data!!!

It seems like people want to see what’s “TR Average” and compare themselves to that.

I’ve broken everything down a lot more. While I was doing this I wonder if we’re breaking new ground here…I don’t think anyone else has this much accurate data on riders.

Insights:

  • You get slower as you get older (duh). You can see that there’s a steep decline starting at 3.5-3.75 FTP/kg for men and women when you compare age in 10-year buckets.
  • For both men and women, there’s a large drop off in performance after 60 (compared to younger athletes)
  • Men seem to lose about .25 FTP/kg every 10 years. This effect plateaus a bit between 40-60.
  • For our users, women have a much more consistent FTP/kg ratio even when age is factored in. If you look at the women’s 18-30 graph you can see that it’s not a perfect bell curve. There’s an outlier at 2.25-2.5. If you remove this (maybe call them beginners?) then it pretty closely follows the male curve of -.25 FTP/kg every 10 years.
  • If we take the above caveats into consideration, men and women seem to have a .5 FTP/kg difference in the same age group bucket.
  • There’s very very few women over 60 who are above 4 watts per kilo. There are so few in-fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they have improper FTPs or weights set (more research needed).
  • Less than 1% of men over 60 have a FTP/kg above 4.0
  • 17.1% of men between 18-30 have a FTP/kg above 4.0
  • Based on this data, you could compare yourself to people in different sexes/age groups. Is the athlete 10 years younger than you? Add .25 to your FTP/kg. Is the athlete a female? Subtract .5 from your FTP/kg. This is more interesting than useful.

Top of bell curve for men
18-30: 3.25 - 3.5 FTP/kg
30-40: 3.0 - 3.25 FTP/kg
40-50: 2.75 - 3.0 FTP/kg
50-60: 2.75 - 3.0 FTP/kg
60-80: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg

Top of bell curve for women
18-30: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg (breaks the bell curve a bit, 2nd highest is 2.75-3.0)
30-40: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg (It’s pretty close to 2.5 - 2.75)
40-50: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg
50-60: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg
60-80: 2.0 - 2.25 FTP/kg

Men

18-30

30-40

40-50

50-60

60-80

All Men


Women

18-30

30-40

female%20-%2030-40

40-50

50-60

60-80

All Women

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