Monday, January 11, 2010

They see me rollin'

So, the snow melting followed by a further freeze meant riding today was not going to happen.

I hit the rollers again. 1st power test, after a warm up and a stretch was a 12 second max power output - my power meter goes up to 999 watt and my output was somewhere over that. After a recovery spin, i did my first 6 minute test. The idea here is to get some idea of velocity (which is estimated in this case from power) at V02 max. In other words, it is the max power output/velocity you can maintain without going anaerobic. Improvements in this = going faster for longer. The idea is to get this level higher as a percentage of the absolute V02 so that you become more 'economic' with your oxygen.

Waste not, want not. Much, anyways!

So for 6 minutes i punted out 365 watts. I think i could put out a little more, maybe close to 390 or maybe even 400 watts (see later). Which would be pretty good, really. Clearly, the thing that really matters here is the variance over time, not the actual numbers...which is good, because the power meter i am using is not super high tech. Having said that, in comparisons with SRM meters it was pretty good, so im happy to use it.

Later, i went back and did some 440 watt 3 minute intervals, with 4 minutes of active rolling in between. 5 times. The 4th hurt pretty bad, but otherwise it was ok ish....hence why i think i could do a little more over 6 minutes.

So where next? i need to do some more power tests: 3, 12 and 30 mins. Then a graded heart rate test. This will allow me to graph my *current* power outputs, and indicate my lactate threshold respectively (the point at which your heart rate jumps up out of sequence with increasing work).

From there i need to do exactly what i *didn't* do last year - climbing!

I did loads of miles, but in an effort to do different rides and not drive so much, and because its all relatively flat around glasgow, i never got the volume of steeper, off road climbs in that you need to do well at endurance races.

The future starts today.

8 comments:

Dean said...

Let's book in a weekend; hop on a train with the road bike and come down - we'll do some hills, lots of lovely hills :^)

Anonymous said...

And a few delicious beers?

Phil The Horse said...

Sounds like a plan!

andytrailfettler said...

nice work Jon.

using a power meter is zee the 3rd dimension to training - an absolute measure of fitness and performance.

keep it up!

Dean said...

Oh yes, delicious beer too. No powermeters, you just need to max out the gurnometer...

martysavalas said...

now you have a road bike, you can seek out some proper road climbs.

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Have-you-heard-of-the-Campsies

if it was good enough for robert millar...

dRjON said...

ive out and backed the campsies a few times on the fixie...s'okay, but the off road decent off the crow road is always appealing after gurning through the wind. the trick will be to do it in a bigger road gear....yep. its on the radar....

martysavalas said...

if you want climbs, then campsies are pretty convenient, no?

that route starts from your door and has 1250m of climbing over 100k.

quality/quantity?