by Robh » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:23 am
With Sean's test not quite text book was a bit more easier to make observations :-
1. Heart rate at the end of the ramp test was around 20-30 beats down based on others I’ve tested with similar recorded high HR’s of 190-195. The low HR contributed to very low lactate value of 2.2mmol. After effects of cold holding you back?
2. Had to get you to do a full on 1 min effort to get HR up to produce more lactate. HR still a bit low would have expected it more closer to 195bpm. I did the same with Apples and he hit 196bpm which he has seen on the road.
3. Your breathing rates jump into the 40 breath per min mark very quickly, would benefit from practicing diaphragm breathing with deep breaths. Did after effects of your cold affect your breathing?
4. Avg cadence of 70rpm is low and would expect this from someone who's only just started riding. I know cadence is a personal thing and people ride at what they feel comfortable with.
5. In the 2nd part of the test where you had troubling holding HR and cadence I believe this imight be due to neurological fatigue. Andrew Sellars of FaCT-Education wrote this to me about your cadence :-
I would say your assessment of the neurological fatigue is spot on. Remember there are two ways to burn out the neurological system.
1) Ride high cadence for extended period of time.
2) Ride very low cadence with high wattage.
Both require thousands of signals form the brain to the skeletal muscle to continue the work. In the first case, the main limiting factor for most people is how quickly they can relax the quadriceps muscle and allow the upstroke to occur, rather than the ability to contract it quickly to develop the power as most people imagine. This is the cause of being hurled off the seat when trying to ride at a cadence above what you are used to. In the second example, after pushing with slow cadence, as you test subject chose to do, he is recruiting a higher percentage of muscle fibers on each rotation, and will run into trouble if expected to do this for a sustained duration of time.
6. LBP is 145bpm but it might be slightly higher because the last lactate number is only up by 0.1mmol which is not that high in terms of an increase. If you had the time I would have held you for another 4 mins @ HR 150 to see if your lactate number would have stayed the same or not, then decide if to go up another 5 beats. But I could see that you were finding the effort hard @ HR 150.