In the past, road cycling was a sport where it was quite difficult to quantify changes
in fitness, unless you were simply comparing yourself to your peers in training or racing.
It's not like athletics or swimming where you're generally doing set distances under
the same conditions. However that all changed with the invention of power meters. We are
now able to quantify changes in fitness over time out on the road without needing to go
into a specific sports science laboratory. They are starting to come down in price but they
are a luxury item, still relatively expensive, but if you're lucky enough to own one, here is
GCN's basic guide on how to get started with a power meter.
Today I'm lucky enough to be using a pair of the brand new Garmin Vector pedals, which
have just come on the market. They're of similar accuracy to the other power metres that are
on the market at the moment, the likes of SRM, PowerTap or Quarq. I've got a Garmin
810 HED unit which is going to record all of the data that we get from today's ride.
I'm going to do four tests today. Normally you'd do these tests over two separate days
because if you do them all properly, they're too hard to do on one training ride. But the
first thing I'm going to do is a sprint test - a couple of 10 second efforts to find out
what my maximum power is. Think of the likes of Mark Cavendish when he goes towards the
line in the last 200 metres. The next test is a one minute climb, again the sort of effort
that somebody might make on a short, sharp climb towards the end of a stage, or perhaps
a kilometre sprinter on the track. Next we're going to do a VO2 max test of around about
5 minutes, which is the sort of effort that an individual pursuiter might make on the
track, or somebody like Philippe Gilbert on one of the climbs in the Ardennes classics.
Finally we're going to do a threshold test. It's going to be 20 minutes long, one of the
hardest things that you can do. Think of the likes of Chris Froome on the climbs, or
Tony Martin in a time trial.
The first test that we're going to do is the sprint test. I normally try and do 3 of these
for a test, that way I'll find on one of them that I've got the absolute maximum out of
myself, and the aim of this test is to find out what our maximum 5 second power
is. In terms of where you want to do it: I tend to find that the end of a downhill is
good, if you can find a downhill which runs off onto the flat, you can get some good speed
up, 30mph, 50km/h plus, that way you'll have to put out your maximum power just to keep
that speed going. If you do it from a slower start, then after 2 or 3 seconds you're going
to find that you'll spin the gear out and you'll need to change up, and that will effect
your peak 5 second value. Let's go and do a couple now.
OK, next up we're going to do the one minute test. Now for this one you want to find
a climb which is of course going to take at least 60 seconds from the bottom to where
you finish, but also that it's on a steady gradient so that you're not having to change
gears and lose power on the way up. Like the sprint, there's no need to pace this one,
you just want to get an explosive start and keep going as hard as possible until the
60 seconds up. And also like the sprint, there's no need to watch your power metre
on the way up, you just want to make sure you've got everything out of yourself by the
time that time is up.
Well I think I can safely say that I got everything out of myself, and you want to get that one
right first time, because it's not something you want to repeat twice on the same ride.
OK, now we're ready to start the 5 minute test. Like the 1 minute one, if you've got
a climb of 5 minutes in duration on a steady gradient that would be absolutely perfect. But if you
haven't, do it on a straight, flat road without any junctions and not too much traffic. Unlike
the first 2 tests, this one does need to be paced - if you start off too hard in that
first 30 seconds or 1 minute you're really going to pay for it over the 2nd half. If
you've got no idea what power you're going to average, then I would suggest that at the
end of the first minute you should be feeling uncomfortable but by no means near your limit.
That way after 2 minutes or so, your brain will have caught up with what your body's
been doing and then you can feel free to go at your absolute maximum from that point on.
Well that was equally as excruciating as the 1 minute one. But if you pace things well,
over that last minute of the 5 minute test, you should be able to do roughly the same
power that you've been doing for the first half of it. But, as I said, it will be excruciating.
OK, last test of the day and it's the 20 minute one which we're going to use to calculate
our FTP - Functional Threshold Power - which is defined as the maximum that somebody can
do for 60 minutes in duration. We're going to take the result from the 20 minute test,
take 5% off and that's going to give us a great indication. Again, if you've got a 20
minute climb that's absolutely perfect. If you haven't, try and find a road with a minimal
number of junctions, no traffic lights and no downhills preferably, so you can get that
power down consistently for the entire duration of the test. Now this is the one where it's
most important to pace yourself. If you're on your limit after 2 or even 4 minutes, then you're
going to start dying and you've got a long time for which to suffer. Ideally
after 5 minutes it should be feeling hard but not too uncomfortable, then once you get
over the halfway point of 10 minutes, that's when it should start to feel really difficult.
I'd forgotten how hard those were. That's exactly why, when you do these tests, especially
on the longer ones, you need to be really fresh and motivated just to be able to get
everything out of yourself. I'll see you in a minute.
Well with all the tests completed, I feel suitably shattered. But as I said at the start
of the video, it's best not to do them all on the same day because you won't get the
maximum out of yourself. I would suggest doing the sprint and the 5 minute test on one day
and on a separate day doing the 1 minute and 20 minute tests, giving yourself adequate
recovery between each. Once you've got those test results, what do you do with them? Well
I'm afraid that's a huge subject which we will get round to covering in future videos,
but in the meantime there is a lot of information out there on the internet and also in books.
Really, you just need to be logical. If you're a sprinter, then you might want to concentrate
on doing the shorter efforts, but bear in mind that in order to use your sprint at the
end of the race, you're going to have to have an adequately high functional threshold power.
Likewise if you're a time-trialist or somebody who focusses on sportives with long mountains,
a sprint is not really going to do too much for you, so you might want to concentrate more
on improving your functional threshold power. Whatever your goals though, if you do these
tests, one or all of them regularly, every 6 to 8 weeks, you'll make sure that everything
is going in the right direction.