Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, April 13, 2008

As I hang out here and "watch" the CyclingNews on-line coverage of Paris-Roubaix, I thought I'd post a brief update on the power tests I did on Friday.  The protocol was pretty simple: a 20 minute warm up, a ladder up the gears until failure to see where my LT heart rate and power were, a 30 minute TT test to get at the same things (kudos to Robert J. for pointing out that this was a better measure than two 10 minute TT efforts like Carmichael recommends), various sprints at different time intervals up to 1 minute and a final 4 minute all out effort.  Of course, interspersed in these were various recovery periods.

So what are the numbers?  My lactate threshold heart rate is 171 this week.  My 1 minute max power at this HR is 385 watts, my ten minute power is 310 watts and my 30 minute power is 290 watts.  On my four minute effort I was able to have an average power of 325 watts.  My 5 second sprint power is an anemic 638 watts and my 30 second average is 438 watts.

I'm not exactly sure what these numbers mean, but I've ordered a book that should help me interpret them and put together a training plan.  The one thing that concerns me though is that the software that came with the PowerTap creates two different sets of training zones based on my heart rate and one my power.  The biggest difference is in the recovery zone where I can go up to about 145 bpm on my heart rate but that creates over 200 watts of power which takes me way out of the recovery zone based on my threshold power.  Hopefully the literature will help to clear this up.

One more day of recovery rides (if, in fact, that's what I've been doing...hmmm) and then it's back to build training.

Thanks for Reading.

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