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Have dusted off my old heart rate monitor and lashed it to the bars with some rubber bands, with a view to being a little more structured with my training in the run up to CX season.
Have a couple of hours coaching session lined up which includes an FTP test. I've mentioned to them that I don't own a power meter so am hoping they can adapt to a max heart rate test or a threshold heart rate test.
I've tried both of the above already, the max heart rate test on a local 3:45m climb (trying to sprint at the top) and the threshold test on the turbo trainer.
I don't think I've got the willpower to push myself hard enough for the max heart rate test, or my max heart rate is quite low (184bpm for a 36 year old).
The threshold test was a bit more scientific, decent warm-up on rollers then on to turbo. I think I went a bit easy though as wasn't struggling too badly at the end. Will try again later in the week a bit faster, as it is I averaged 162bpm.
Would rather perform threshold test outdoors but it seems impossible to find the right road, 30 minutes, no lights, junctions, sharp hills etc. Everything local is quite rolling, or has a village/town every 10-20 minutes.
How do other people perform this test outdoors? (have two days riding in Mallorca next week, wondering if I could use the Sa Calobra, I know what pace I can maintain, but it takes 40 minutes not 30...)
Ta
Find a big hill. Doesn't really need 30 mins, I think 20 is enough. I can't get anywhere near my known threshold on a turbo, for some reason. Always 20% less power for the same pain.
Think the 30 minutes are suggested to get your HR up before hitting the lap button for the remaining 20 minutes, a little bit different to testing with a PM?
Could you find a relatively quiet route with only left hand turns, reasonably open and with a decent view for approaching traffic?
You'll obviously back off a little but it may not be significant in a HR test.
You could certainly use Sa Calobra, first 10 minutes to get your HR up, hit the lap button and carry on climbing. After another 20 minutes hit the lap button again, ease up and ignore the last 10 minutes or so.
I have similar motivational issues planning a threshold test. I’m doing one tonight and on Sunday (in case I don’t try hard enough tonight).
So tonight it’s a 25mile TT (confined). Hope to be able to keep the average power up there. A few years ago I averaged 170 heart rate for that course. I’m a bit older know so reckon anything above 160 would be good. I always seem to work harder with a number on my back.
Sunday morning is an open TT out and back with a flyover so no dead turns like tonight. Should get a good idea between these 2. Will be looking at the average power but this can also work on a heart rate threshold. Just bear in mind it will creep up as you get nearer the end of the test.
A 25 like aberdeenlune says is a good way - there will be local 25s on in the evening now, but if not you could enter an open one at a weekend on the CTT website.
Just going out and riding threshold for one hour I would find crucifyingly difficult, but in an event with the number pinned on it's different gravy - far more mentally tractable.
It will also give you a genuine 1 hr HR reading, rather than a scaled approximation.
Aberdeenlune.... Do I know you..... I assume if your Aberdeen based and your doing a 25 tonight it's the garlogie-torphins course -see your there then. - black stealth with the ugly pro-lite rear disk (white pizza slice graphics -cant be missed)
Anyway op. If the coaching includes an FTP test then surely it's on some kind of trainer/wattbikealike where they can give you a power read out you can correlate to your heart rate....and barring heart rate creep and gradual improvement for short CX training purposes heart rate and power will correlate roughly through out the zones
Also what they say about numbers.
My power numbers in FTP tests are abysmal and well below what my race results against the clock say my power really should be..... No one has been able to motivate me through FTPs to go harder. Stick a number on my back and I'll turn my self inside out.
It would be interesting to race with power to look at retrospectively but not 300 quid interesting
There is also the two 8 minute efforts test to check your threshold.
10m easy to moderate warm up
1m Fast Pedal easy gear
1m easy recovery
2m Fast Pedal
1m easy recovery
1m As hard as you can go
4m easy recovery
8m As hard as you can maintain, start steady and increase pace into it.
10m recovery
8m As hard as you can.
Take the higher of the two average HR or Power for the 8m efforts and multiply by .9 to get your ftp or fthr.
I am lazy and experience tells me that doing 1 8m effort rather than 2 gets my threshold close enough for my non race based pottering around.
Regards
The motivational point is interesting, I've always known I can push harder in events, even Sportives (which is my main reason for happily handing over the cash).
Haze makes a great point about just using 20 minutes of the Sa Calobra, but unfortunately I still have my own completely arbitrary PB to beat, so I'll be pacing for the whole 40 (well, 38:34 😉 ) minutes rather than pushing hard for 20 then collapsing.
Had another look on Strava route planner, if I use some of the ugly looking A-Roads that I usually avoid like the plague then there are a couple of options. Might also look at the TTs, have always fancied clipping a set of aero-bars on, and at least it won't be screamingly obvious to the spectators if I'm dead last...
Sa Calobra will be perfect!
Approx 30mins is good for a heart rate threshold test, taking the last 20mins. Depending on your predicted time up that climb, you could use some more of the start as a warm up. Then really go for it. (When I was fitter 2 years ago, I was just under 36 mins up there)
I know my threshold HR, and last time I did that climb I stuck at threshold and it worked a treat.
It's very motivational also, if you let your mates lead off 2 mins ahead, and try and catch them. You'll just about see them around the bends up ahead, so keeps you pushing as hard as you can.
That's useful Spangels, there are plenty of good 8 minute efforts near me, the final section of my commute is a really good 10 minute TT so I could just go hard, double back whilst recovering, then go hard again. Only adds twenty minutes to the commute as well...
Good point on pacing Kid.a, would probably benefit my overall time anyway if I took it easy for the first 10 minutes. Last time I didn't need mates to pace, I had a whole Irish club group to chase, they were strung out along the length of the climb! I'll chase almost anyone to be honest, thankfully am a good judge of how serious someone looks so know when to back off!
I'd use the Puig Major rather than Sa Calobra - much easier climb to consistently pace on and less chance of being affected by buses / cars. HR is going to be affected by a whole bunch of things, including temperature, so perhaps Mallorca is not the best place. I'd just enjoy the riding out there and not worry about testing. HR is never going to be a particularly accurate way of training (although it is workable and I've done a season of training based on HR before and achieved good results), so a ballpark figure achieved at home (indoors or outdoors) is as good as any. You can then adjust intensity of your workouts based on RPE.
That Joe Friel comment is confusing, is he suggesting that the motivational effect of competition leads to misleading results? Or does he just mean that you'll end up riding outside of your 'threshold' zone?
He sort of contradicts himself by saying you should be riding as hard as you can for 30 minutes. Surely if in a race or chasing other riders on the road you are able to hold a higher heart rate for 30 minutes then that is the more correct number?
Am going off the idea of using the climbs in Mallorca, I only have two opportunities to ride and want both to be relatively easy zone 2 type rides with the exception of the Sa Calobra which I want to push hard on for the whole lot, so won't be able to pace consistently and won't be using the bottom 10 min as a warm up (we'll have ridden Puig Major already by that point, plenty warmed up!). Will keep an eye on the HRM just out of interest.
Plus more relevantly, I won't have had time to buy an ANT+ chest strap before I go, currently just reading off my cheapo HRM watch lashed to the bars with rubber bands and jotting the numbers down every minute (hence having to do it on the turbo). I think this invalidates the test a wee bit also as I'm not able to ride consistently 'as hard as I can' if I'm taking a hand of the bars every minutes to scribble something down in a notebook on the workstand next to me!
if your riding in a race you have others to draft and this will give recovery between efforts.skewing the results.
Yeah I think it's the draft effect/mini recoveries. You can't ride too hard, so long as you finish the duration. Go as hard as you can possibly go, whilst still completing the 30 (20) minutes.
A local option might be turn up to your local club 10 mile time trial. That was my most frequent measure of FTP. You'll prob be somewhere in the 20-25 minute region. But it's proper balls out.
And definitely use chest HRM, not watch. The watch will be inaccurate. I've got both. Watch is rubbish, well good enough for recording a casual ride, but not good enough for testing.
Watch / optical is terrible...
I can do a hard chain gang and the watch reckons I never got out of zone 3.
Go along the next week having remembered my strap and I've hit zone 5......
Just doesn't have the resolution for the short efforts .
Aye sorry, I meant it's a watch that uses a chest strap. What it doesn't do is record averages or broadcast to my phone/Garmin, so I can't analyse after the fact.
My ultimate goal was to have a rough idea of max or threshold heart rate before coaching session, but given that I'll only have one more opportunity to test before holiday I'll maybe just do another test on the turbo but push a wee bit harder.
At the end of the day the only useful thing I can take into coaching session is the 'feel' of a balls out 30 minute effort, given that their trainer will be different from mine, so cadence/speed on my turbo won't relate to their turbo anyway. I did think it was ominous that the guy rescheduled our session so that his colleague could be there, so that 'there will be two of us shouting at you instead of just one...'