Paracycling | 2025 Objectives!

It’s the final day of the year (2024) and it took almost the whole year to tick off the final objectives. I had a few goals for the year as noted. A few goals were general fitness related (under 80kg), while others were technical (Track accreditation, done) but the majority of the goals were power based.

The idea was to beat my average power best from 1 second to 3 hours. A few of them weren’t too difficult. The 5 seconds and 3 hours were the first to be done, but they were both the easiest two to get. The 30min record was the next to go, which I did in the Paracycling National Series Round 4 in Middlesborough. The 60minute and 90minute efforts were achievable for a while before I did them, but it took a solo effort to tick them both off (which was actually a single ride of 90mins).

I, then, broke 1second to 33seconds when following Charlotte Deykin on a training ride - I’m not sure I’ll break those records for a while. The following week, at the Paracycling National Series Round 5 TT, I set all the records from 4minutes30seconds to 33minutes. That left two efforts left which was the 1minute and 2minute efforts. The 1minute effort was comfortably beaten during the Sudbury CC Hill Climb, when I did 619w, which is much lower than I know I an do (I should be able to do around 700w).

That left one effort remaining for December, which I knew would be quite easy to do but required a dedicated effort—this being the 2-minute effort.

Going into December, a by-product of this was that not only had I achieved all these records on an individual basis, but the whole of the power curve from 1 second to 3 hours (45mins) was beaten this year outside of two efforts. The 2minute effort needed to be expanded from just 2minutes to 1min43seconds to 2min25seconds, and the new effort was 1hour43minutes to 1hour58minutes. So I did a 2hour effort at 264w to beat the needed effort of 246w for 1hour43minutes and sustained it until the 2hour mark.

The only remaining effort left was to target the 2minute effort (or the 2minute25second effort to be precise now) and the power needed to break the record was 470w. Which hopefully would coincide with the 3minute test as part of the Critical Power test.

The final objective I’ve not discussed is the FTP objectives of 300w and 4w/kg. While I’ve moved from looking at FTP to more looking at Critical Power, I still achieved both objectives. While it was my first Critical Power test on the 27th, I did achieve an "estimated" CP of 317w (3.96w/kg). My target was 475w for 3minutes and 375w for 12minutes, which would give a CP of 342w which seems quite high. The 12minute power of 375w is based off what I did at the Race SQT at Derby on the 21st December. The 3minute power of 475w is based more on vibes - that said WKO5’s MMNP Curve says that 467w should be possible. However, the legs just didn’t react well to being back on the road bike or the Christmas break. It was probably the worst day I’ve had on the bike from a power output perspective - that said I still did 450w for 3minutes, but I had to stop during the 12minute effort due to losing all feeling in my left foot after initially losing some feeling during the 3minute effort. I was on track for 350w for 12minutes and I know I could have finished the effort, but I didn’t want to risk it. (Luckily it hasn’t happened since). My 12minute effort finishing after 7minutes at 350w.

So what did the 3minutes at 450w mean for the final objective of 2minute power? Nothing. I missed the PBs by 1w consistently and therefore had to go again on the final day of the year. But I did achieve the goal which meant that the objectives were completed by the end of the year!

Basic Curve:

Advanced Power Curve:

(In fact I broke it all the way to 3hours46minutes!)

Onto 2025 Objectives!

Goals are there to be celebrated and the goals, for 2024, I set out were quite ambitious, but they were all very realistic. This year, I’m looking to be ambitious and arguably a bit too much. That said, there are stepping stones which I’ll look to target first and then see if I can get up to where I feel I need to be.

The first goal is vague, but I’d like to be competitive in the Paracycling National Series on the Road and Track - the Road series combines Crit racing and TTs and Track combines Kilo, IP (4km) and Scratch Racing. From an equipment perspective, I know I won’t be competitive in TTs as I focused on Track. But for the other four events, I feel like I should be able to be competitive in them. 

I would like to get a 2nd Cat licence. This is helped by being a paracyclist, in 2024 I scored 27 points out of the 40 required without being competitive. That said I would like to be able to get some decent results in the open crit races that I do throughout the year (I’m looking at Ixworth, Cambridge, London Academy and a few others already).

While not directly power related (obviously power helps), I’d like to be competitive in the timed track events of Kilo and IP. I don’t really know what will be possible as I’ve not ridden with a full set up yet but I’d like to do a sub 75 second kilo and perhaps more ambitiously I’d like to get close to the Men’s National IP Qualifying time of 4:35. The latter target is very ambitious and I’m not entirely sure how close I’ll get.

This goes into my targets for the year, I think in order to get close to the 4:35, I think I will need to be able to do around 500w for 5minutes. That would around a 20% increase from my current PB but I think that is possible (as of the 1st January 2025, my estimated 5minute power would be around 420w). In order to do this, I suspect that my FTP will have to be around 375w using the basic equation that RAMP tests uses that FTP is 75% of MAP. That said, my big goal is 400w.

With the focus on track and crit racing, max power is something that I need to work on. My goal is to do 1000w for 10seconds consistently. At the moment (01/01/2025), I have a max of 999w for 5 seconds and 949w for 10seconds but that was a one-off “race” situation with fresh legs. The goal is to be able to do it at the end of a race.

My final power goal is 800w for 1minute. While I doubt I can expand much on my max sprint, the goal will be to try and sustain it. In theory, on fresh legs I should be able to do almost 800w for 30seconds so being able to expand that with focused training should help increase the duration. This is also ambitious, and might be not be able to hit, but it is a good "North Star" to target.

This year, I’m adding a duration target too. While the target isn’t actually that high, I’d like to ride a minimum of 300 hours this year (which equates to just under 6 hours a week). The aim will be to try and ride around 8 hours a week, there will be weeks where I focus on track which will mean less riding but at higher intensity. 

The final objectives is focusing on technical skills. I’d like to be able to navigate a bunch. It’s an acquired skill so I’m not expecting to get it immediately but being able to go up the group when I need to will be important. It’s something that in Paracycling, we don’t do too much of because the groups are so small. However, that leads onto my next target for my general development which is to enter a National B Road Race. 

This also signals a more targeted, focused approach for the upcoming year. 2024 was about discovering the sport again, but 2025 is where I need to step up my racing to a competitive level.