Show us your power curve and we’d be able to give you an idea of whether you might tend towards a particular type of riding. None of us are going to threaten the TdF podium but there are ways to focus your desires and training towards likely success.
For instance if you weigh 100Kgs you are going to have a lot more to drag up a hill than a 50Kg rider.
If you can throw out a max of 1500W and still hold 800W after 15 seconds then you might have a hope of being a sprinter.
For instance, I’ll struggle to hit 1000W in a sprint, but i can hold 300W + for an hour easily enough. @ 74Kg, and i can get up hills pretty fast compared to others i ride with. Does this mean i’ll be a “climber”? No, not in any sense that it’d matter against real climbers (as they drop me), but it does mean that i can have fun doing that sort of riding rather than spending too much time trying to fine tune a sprint that just isn’t there.
The ramp test does not give you your power profile.
If you want your power profile you can try an app on the play store called “Cycling Power Profiler”. You enter your 5sec, 1 min, 5 min, and 20 min best power numbers and body weight. You can get your power numbers from your TrainerRoad Personal Records under your career. The app won’t tell you directly if you’re a sprinter, all-rounder, TTer etc. But you can go to here Creating Your Power Profile to get more info how to read the charts. But I think i should be easy to tell if you have a really good 5 sec power compared to your 1 and 5 min power etc. You can also use this data to see if you need to work on anything specific.
I’m with you. I’m 275 and focused on dropping pounds even if at the expense of intensity. It’s the right time of year for that anyways. I put together a chart of desecending weight loss on one axis and increasing power on the other. The moral of he story is you’re way better off dropping pounds than adding watts. If that means doing Taku and watching TV to stay on the bike then great. The easy workouts require less focus and I’ve also found it way easier to make good choices in the kitchen where it truly matters after easy workouts as opposed to VO2 max work.
The other thing I’ve found is I seem to require a TON more cooling than my friends for indoor rides. Open windows, have a cooler with icy water towels and of course have multiple fans blowing on you.
As much as everyone says amateurs should not train like the professionals, a very big take-away from the pro ranks is that amateurs can train themselves into any type of rider they wish, regardless of the type of rider they are currently.
A very timely example would be Philippe Gilbert and his recent Paris-Roubaix win. The 3-year plan to win P-R: Gilbert moved away from working on his explosive power and top-end speed, and instead he focused on pure power output.
In his own words:
The weight is same, it’s more of a difference in the training… It’s practically like I’ve been doing another sport for a few years, because I was racing against climbers and now I’m competing with rouleurs. When I decided to take on this challenge three years ago, many people told me the cobbles weren’t for me. Now I’ve won the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. I was able to transform my qualities as a puncheur. Now, I’m a different rider and I’m very happy to have done it.
Read the full story to inspire your own tranformational training!
This is always a topic that gets brought up in racing as well; you get newer racers who pigeonhole themselves into certain roles because of their current body type or what they feel they suck at.
Skinny rider? Climber
Thicc boi? Sprinter
Can’t sprint but still put out big watts consistently? TT specialist
When I first started racing I definitely fall into the same trap. I was bigger than most guys and could win sprints from smaller fields rather easily. But I couldn’t maintain a super hard effort on my own so I often just sat in and waited till the race end. As I upgraded, I found myself lacking the pure watts to come around some of the guys putting out 17/1800 watts.
Fast forward to the first time I managed to (more like fell ass-backwards) make it in a breakaway. I was dying near the end of the race, and didn’t have much left, but I saw just how much easier the race could be from that perspective. There was so many less riders to worry about!
When I told my coach about it he told me “you’re not really a breakaway rider (right now).” Being stubborn-headed like I was I began to do more breakaway-like efforts and training (after telling my coach I wanted to move in that direction). After a season’s worth of training, I found myself in more and more breakaways and could attack multiple times throughout a race without hesitation.
Now, I know that’s one of my preferred ways of winning. If I can force a break or get into one, and make it stick, I know I have a pretty good shot of getting on the podium.
Until you’re at the very top of the sport, don’t try to force yourself into a certain classification. I’ve seen guys my size drop guys half their weight up climbs, because that’s what they train for and they’ve developed the ability to do it.
Your only limiters are what you feel is achievable (yes, I’m aware of how cheesy this sounds). If you want to sprint, go train those efforts. The same goes with TT’s, breaks, climbs, etc… At the amateur level, if you put the work in and are doing what you need to do, there is no reason you can’t be whatever kind of rider you want to be.