Annual Training Plan Part #6: Assessing Your Fitness Bike Portion

This is one of the not so fun things about training.  Assessing your fitness requires pushing your body to the limits just so you can measure your fitness.  Although using race data is good, most of the time we lack that environment for testing.  Thus, the motivation, focus and determination need to be self-generated and self-sustained.  Much easier said than done.

Note: this test is based on Hunter Allen's Training and Racing with a Power Meter

 

Functional Threshold Power and Threshold HR: Bike Time Trial Test (On the road)

Pre-Test:

• Do not eat for two hours before the test.


• Best if the day before was a 'light' workout.


• Use power meter if available, but definitely a HR monitor and stopwatch.


• Warm-up 10-20 for 10-20 minutes.  This warm-up should be moderate pace or 65% of max HR.


• Note your warm-up routine.


• Made sure you hit the 'lap' button or some way to measure each step below individually.

Test:

1. 5 minutes all out.  Basically, punch it and hold it.  Start at a high pace, but not so high you die at the end.


2. 10 minutes easy endurance pace.  65% of max HR.


3. 20 minute time trial.  Do this on a flat road.  Do not start out too hard.  Gradually get up to speed and then hold that speed.


4. 10-15 minutes endurance pace again.


5. 10-15 minutes cool down

The goal is to produce the highest output possible over 20-minutes.  It's not an accurate test if you go balls out and then die at the end.  The first two minutes should be gradual build up to a power you can sustain for 20 minutes.

Calculating your threshold is as follows:

1. Note your average power for the 20 minute TT


2. Subtract 5% from this number and that's  your FTP


3. Your average HR for the 20 minutes is your threshold HR.

The reasoning for subtracting 5% is because that will give you a more accurate measure of your 60-minute FTP and/or threshold HR. It's good to do this test four to six times a year.

Below are the results from my last test.  My test was completed on a trainer, thus test results are always lower since there are no external factors involved (wind, pavement, bike balance, etc.).  To give you an example, my FTP was 258 as of July, but as of October 18 test, FTP is 238.  If you do yours on a trainer, it will come in lower.  But still a good measure.  Before I move my training outside, I'll do one more test on the trainer so I can compare apples to apples.

The second photo is the quadrant analysis.  The blue dots are the 20 minute time trial.  This shows 42% of my time in quad 2, which is high power, low cadence.  This quad is typical of a mountain bike race.  This is confirmed by my low average cadence (83).  Ideally I'd like to get those dots closer to quad 1. (click on image for larger view)