[benb]

Perhaps. Everything is suspect on Strava. Lots of funny math in their software I think.

My FTP is in the 260-270 range when I'm fit.. I'm 41. A long long time ago I did OK in Cat 5 and Cat 4. I had a contract gig when I was a 5 that had zero stress & restricted hours. No responsibilities in my life. Crushed that season, I won one race with a solo breakaway that was like 10 miles. Then I got a startup job that fall and never have trained like that again. Life got in the way, I didn't want to be chronically single, had some health/diet issues that were way harder to figure out than they should have been. I met my wife 18 months after that Cat 5 solo breakaway... I'd be divorced for sure if I trained like that again.

Last season on more than one occasion I successfully hit 300w for 10 minutes doing intervals. Didn't get a single successful attempt at a 20 minute interval for a test all season. I have one particular loop near my house where I can do 10 minutes without any traffic controls. It has several downhills which hurt the # but it's the best I have. But you can't do 2 loops of it for 20 minutes as there is a dangerous 4 way stop at the end of the loop. 20 minutes without a really successful loop could take me through 2 different town centers where I live. Just not easy to find good places at all.

Two things I've noticed:
- My #s are way lower on a trainer unless you stick it in a wind tunnel. I am personally pretty susceptible to overheating. I have a hard time on the hottest days of the summer too, especially on really long rides. So really high #s achieved on the trainer seem more suspicious to me. For a 1 minute or 5 minute interval no problem, for a 20 minute interval.. I'd need a really really good setup. Otherwise I can feel my core temp go up and my HR starts to skyrocket while power goes down. Something that definitely doesn't happen outside.

- In the real world you're not going to actually do an uninterrupted 1 hour interval unless you're in a closed road course flat TT with a headwind the whole way or something or you have easy access to a world class mountain road.

I find it almost impossible to even find a good stretch of road to do a 20 minute interval for an FTP test in my area. No ride I've ever done where I tried to do a test was a really high quality test. There's always at least one of:
- Stop sign or light that you can't figure out a route around
- A really tight corner you have to stop pedaling
- A downhill that you can't seem to keep your power up during
- Wind that either helps you too much to keep your power up or throws you around to the point you can't pedal steadily enough

Not sure where you are, I very rarely will average 20+ mph for 1 hour completely solo. I might attempt to do that once a season or so as an alternate workout, and I can do it when I'm fit, but my average power is meaningless for that.. there is probably no place within a hundred miles of my house where you could do that as a steady effort because of all the factors I mentioned, meanwhile you will need to hammer out 400w up some of the hills to keep your average speed up, and I'd definitely coast down some of the hills to conserve energy too.

The only places I can think any of these rides/tests can be done meaningfully for me is major mountain climbs that would probably be near "HC" in the European systems. I could get a really good # if I paid $500 for a hotel room and an entry in the Mt. Washington hillclimb. There's pretty much no break going up that and it will take an hour for basically anyone who isn't a pro level climber and/or on EPO. But I've done it 2X and both times I had to stop pedaling at one point or be blown off the road! I could also drive 1 hour + into NH and did Rt. 101 up to Pack Monadnock. The actual Pack Monadnock summit road doesn't take 20 minutes to ride up. I rode up there once last year but I had rode 55 miles into a headwind with like 3000ft of climbing by the time I got up there, I was way too cooked to do a test once I got out there to a hill big enough to do it on.

Average speed with other riders is totally meaningless obviously.

For me chasing FTP with too many intervals is pretty dangerous in terms of burnout too. I would really like to say I got to 300 but it's a stretch. It does give me a training goal and something to chase since there's no way I'm racing again married with a kid, it'd be safer to take up skydiving or buy a motorcycle and go back to the racetrack.