Cts Field Tests - Thoughts?

[bgoetz]

After a couple of years of tours and competitive group rides I am going to give racing a try, so I will be starting out as a CAT 5 until I get my 10 starts. I have always been a stronger rider, but in preparation for racing I have decided to train pretty hard, with hopes of doing well. I have been training for 6 weeks and decided to do a CTS field test to get a baseline (I know I should have done this 6 weeks ago, but...).

For those who don't know the test consists of a structured warm up (10 min of easy and 12 min of a prescribed mix of efforts), followed by an 8 minute max effort, then a 10 minute easy pace, followed by another 8 minute max effort. You take averages after each of the 8 minute max efforts.

We did the testing indoors on a Cyclops trainer with a power meter. I did have a cold at the time, but based on my perceived effort I am not sure how much better I could have done without the cold. The 1st 8 minute effort I came out of the gate and tried to hold over 500 watts, which worked for around 2 min, before I blew up and dropped to around 300 watts, LOL

results:

Test 1: Average power-326 watts, Average HR-168 bpm, Average cadence-89 rpm, Max HR 192 (they have you go all out the last 30 sec to get this)

Test 2: Average power-342 watts, Average HR-169bpm, Average cadence-88 rpm, Max HR 192

The average HR corresponds well with my 20 minute LT intervals that I do on the trainer. What I took from it is that for me to gain power my focus should be increasing my cadence and threshold HR. Any other thoughts on how I should focus my training based on the #s? Any thoughts on how those #s compare to others (all I can seem to find for comparison is 5sec, 1min, 5min, and 20min #s)?

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Those are good 8 minute power numbers for a soon to be Cat 5 racer, not a bad starting point (assuming you don't weigh 200 kilos /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif)

Personally I don't care much for the 8 minute test protocols, it's pretty short for estimating sustainable power or FTP and results vary a lot depending on the particular rider's anaerobic vs. aerobic capabilities. But it is relatively easy to perform and a lot of newer riders that would struggle to get through longer tests can finish both 8 minute efforts. But I'm not surprised you aren't finding a lot of references to 8 minute power numbers as many coaches use other tests and 8 minutes is sort of a 'tweener duration as it's on the long side of primarily VO2 Max efforts but just on the verge of being primarily a Threshold effort.

But still, I've worked with several reasonably successful Cat 4 and 5 riders in the 70-75 kg weight range that struggle to hit 340 watts for five minutes much less eight so I'd say you're doing all right.

In terms of your takeaways, I wouldn't necessarily conclude that higher cadence is the ticket to improved performance, it might well be on your trainer where keeping leg and wheel speed up can help compensate for lack of real world inertia but whether that translates to more power in races held outdoors is hard to say. Some folks find they do better at higher cadences, personally my best time trials from including full 40 km time trials have happened when my average cadence was around 80 even though I ride crits and other bursty events up in the 95-110 range. Anyway cadence is typically secondary to simply focusing on the power part through sustained long intervals at self selected cadence.

Similarly, HR doesn't typically increase as you train more. In many cases it actually decreases as your sustainable power increases due to increases in heart stroke volume. The key is to sustain more power, that might result in higher heart rates, it might not but again the focus should be on power regardless of heart rate. Even if your heart rate increases during the early phases of focused training that trend isn't likely to continue for long as that's not an expected or typical result of continued training.

There's plenty written on these forums and elsewhere about training to raise your FTP and race specific prep as the season approaches. But the short answer is to train with goals and do the work. A lot of long sustained efforts at Tempo through Threshold pace is a good place to start and forms the bulk of my off season training but as races approach you'll want to do work tailored to the needs of your events like microintervals and short primarily anaerobic efforts to prep for crits and of course some sprint work can pay off in a lot of racing situations.

Good luck,
-Dave

 

[Felt_Rider]

I am not sure if you are actually coached by CTS, but I have two local friends here that are coached by CTS and neither of them use the CTS Field test protocol. They both use the 20 minute effort. From my understanding, CTS has a lot of coaches so I don't know if that comes from their particular coach or if that was just their personal choice not to follow CTS protocol.

Oddly enough I got a Facebook message this morning from one of them stating he is doing his test in February and wanted to know if I wanted to test as well.

 

[bgoetz]

Dave, thanks for the advice!! Good to know I have something to work with, I don't weigh 200 kg /img/vbsmilies/smilies/biggrin.gif. I am a bigger guy with a good bit of muscle mass though (88 kg), but I am working on getting down to a better "race weight", and am confident that I can get down to below 85 kg over the next month or so.

My training to date has included 2 x 20 min LT intervals, 2 times a week and 2 sets of 10-30 sec x 30 sec VO2 intervals once a week, incorporated into more paced efforts on the trainer. I personally am not a big fan of the 8 min interval either, it just felt like a good way to track progress, since we started with it, I guess we will stick with it....

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Why not simply track the average sustainable power for your 20 minute training intervals? Andy offers that as the second best way for estimating FTP behind an an actual 40 km TT ridden in competition conditions and is exactly how I track changes in sustainable power and FTP. I'll back that up with actual 40 km time trials once or twice per year, 1x60s in training (though they typically come closer to 95% of current FTP) and perhaps a Monod or MAP test from time to time. But it's really simple to just track your regular and repeatable power for sustained 20 minute or longer intervals as a way to estimate FTP that's pretty reliable and doesn't require dedicated testing days.

Alex offers insight on that method as well as other approaches to FTP testing and some of the pitfalls here:

http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/2008/05/seven-deadly-sins.html
http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/2009/07/sins-of-sins-testing-ftp-2.html

-Dave

 

[bgoetz]

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .

Why not simply track the average sustainable power for your 20 minute training intervals?

I would love to, but I don't have a power meter on my bike /img/vbsmilies/smilies/frown.gif. For the CTS test we used a Cyclops trainer with a power meter and did it at the LBS that my friend runs, using it for training would be difficult because the LBS is 30 min from my house. The thought is I train hard for the next month and then come back and see what the #s look like on a repeat of our test. So for now I just have to go off of my HR and perceived effort for my 20 min LT intervals. Just this test alone has made me realize the benefit of a power meter, it is just that they are so expensive and if I keep spending $ on this hobby, well my wife, she may kill me.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Makes sense, I see where you're coming from. In that case, keep doing the work, tune into RPE to keep yourself honest and working hard during those L4 efforts and an occasional test session using any repeatable protocol can give you feedback. In addition to testing at your friend's place, see if you can find an eight to twenty minute steady hill nearby. Timing your laps up something like that is a very good way to track progress as hillclimbing time is a very good way to estimate power as its not impacted as much by weather conditions as doing the same thing on flatter terrain.

Good luck,
-Dave