by Sylv » Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:07 pm
Thanks to Rob for the opportunity to take this test. As Michelle wrote it was somewhat enjoyable, sitting on my bike trying to stick to a given Wattage, HR or cadence, with one person prodding me around at the fingers, another wiping the sweat off my head and assisting with the monitoring, and a third one watching in silence taking mental notes for his upcoming test! But it was all done in a very competent manner and all I had to worry about was pedalling smoothly and sticking to a given figure.
I must say the data and analysis is now only starting to slowly make sense to me.
As Rob suggested here is some thoughts and comments post-test. Further to Andrew's comment I acknowledged that I hardly, if ever ride at a slower tempo, even on my own like when commuting. Something that's obviously not been doing me any good, now shown black on white. So no Sean, it's not all good!
As I understand it, there is a significant drop in the wattage after the ramp test to the level 8 of 10 of perceived exhaustion, ie during the following gradual increase in heart rate (recovery period, starting at 135bpm then up to 150 the determined LBP), first 27% decrease, then 20%, all the way to over 10% at LBP. If you look at Mike's test, the decrease is only 6.7% at that point (300w to 280w), and the value almost 100w higher.
Also Rob has corrected the values of RPE as I initially was overstating them, moving up one figure with every 20w increase, so that by the time I was at 260w it was getting to 8, whereas the effort wasn't all that hard - I should have realised I could have incremented in halves, say 6 to 6.5 to 7 etc - we corrected it on the go so that I was able to get to 300w for a RPE of 8 - so worth keeping in mind for future testees. But on the other hand be careful not to understate it as you will have to keep the final wattage for about 4 minutes whilst keeping a controlled cadence and respiratory rate.
I was not paying attention to my breathing in the early stages, which rate was about twice as fast as Rob's at that point. This is something you have to do consciously. Diaphragm breathing would helps there wouldn't it.
So in this early stage I will start by getting myself a HRM. And most likely will follow with supervised training which would involve a lot of riding below LBP. Also need to lose the 3kg I have put up in the last few months (thanks to cooked lunch being served at work ...) to increase my watt/kg ratio.