someone give me insight to this data

wardie2000 said:

I have recently been training in france and on the last day i had a surprise power threshold test.

The data is as follows:

Age: 21
Weight: 82.6kg

Threshold power: 380watts
Threshold HR: 172bpm
Max power at constant level: 440w after 47mins

This was after a heavy week of riding covering over 1000km in 6days. After the test i flew back home for a team time trial. I was absolutely shattered.

Could someone spread some light on where this data puts me in the grand scheme of things and what it means.

Thanks
Chris

How was this measured and what was the protocol?

Try racing with your peers wherever you are and you will find out.

cyclingpeakssoftware.comprofile.htmlOpen ↗

wardie2000 said:

I have recently been training in france and on the last day i had a surprise power threshold test.

The data is as follows:

Age: 21
Weight: 82.6kg

Threshold power: 380watts
Threshold HR: 172bpm
Max power at constant level: 440w after 47mins

This was after a heavy week of riding covering over 1000km in 6days. After the test i flew back home for a team time trial. I was absolutely shattered.

Could someone spread some light on where this data puts me in the grand scheme of things and what it means.

Thanks
Chris

You might consider looking for a spot on CSC or Discovery. By the way, when you say threshold power how was that measured? John

Guys, that's only 4.6w/kg. How long he can hold it that's the question. I think my norm power is 249, 4.3w/kg, for 30 minutes. Hmm.....at the end of my 30minutes TT interval I can still deliever 670w for 5 sec (sprinting). I am an average cat4. At 82kg you are heavy.

wardie2000 said:

I have recently been training in france and on the last day i had a surprise power threshold test.

The data is as follows:

Age: 21
Weight: 82.6kg

Threshold power: 380watts
Threshold HR: 172bpm
Max power at constant level: 440w after 47mins

This was after a heavy week of riding covering over 1000km in 6days. After the test i flew back home for a team time trial. I was absolutely shattered.

Could someone spread some light on where this data puts me in the grand scheme of things and what it means.

Thanks
Chris

BlueJersey said:

Guys, that's only 4.6w/kg. How long he can hold it that's the question. I think my norm power is 249, 4.3w/kg, for 30 minutes. Hmm.....at the end of my 30minutes TT interval I can still deliever 670w for 5 sec (sprinting). I am an average cat4. At 82kg you are heavy.

The first question is what can he sustain for say 1 hour. If he is talking about his lactate threshold then he may be able to sustain well into 400 Watts for an hour depending on the particular blood lactate that was used to define his threshold.He may go as high as 5.5 Watts/Kg for the hour. If he would be so kind as to tell us how the threshold was measured perhaps we could calculate something useful for him. The second question is what is his cefficient of drag or at minimum frontal area. I guess he would be really good at TTs. I agree 4.6 Watts/KG does not look like the Polkadot jersey.John

Thanks for the replies, this test was a basic one with power against HR.

At the end of last season(my first proper full season) i did the test with the 4mm/mol level. with that my threshold came out at 330w(this test was done at the end of my month off the bike). But after a proper winter training plan and riding for a better team i feel far better and stronger.

The test that i have just completed was done on a friday lunchtime after a ride in the morning and a recce of a hill climb. the test went up 20w every 3mins, with me lasting until 440w.

I know that i am heavy at the moment, but am slowly losing the weight. by the start of next season i hope to be below 80kg.

As regards actual cycling, i find that i can drop people on hills and mountains when racing, also i have no problem in tt's as you lot worked out.

Again hope this info has given you a bit more of an insight, hope you can offer advice and information as you all have previously done

Chris

wardie2000 said:

Thanks for the replies, this test was a basic one with power against HR.

At the end of last season(my first proper full season) i did the test with the 4mm/mol level. with that my threshold came out at 330w(this test was done at the end of my month off the bike). But after a proper winter training plan and riding for a better team i feel far better and stronger.

The test that i have just completed was done on a friday lunchtime after a ride in the morning and a recce of a hill climb. the test went up 20w every 3mins, with me lasting until 440w.

I know that i am heavy at the moment, but am slowly losing the weight. by the start of next season i hope to be below 80kg.

As regards actual cycling, i find that i can drop people on hills and mountains when racing, also i have no problem in tt's as you lot worked out.

Again hope this info has given you a bit more of an insight, hope you can offer advice and information as you all have previously done

Chris

Chris,
Assuming that the test in France produced about 4 mM lactate you can assume that this is the maximum 1 hour steady state sustainable lactate that you can achieve.You might want to check this with Dr Coggan who subscribes to this forum and knows a lot more than I do about this since I am involved in a different branch of physiology. If you weighed 80 Kg this would give you 5.5 Watts/Kg for a 1 hour power (roughly). However I suspect that the test you did in France inflated your lactate threshold. A further confounding factor is that you were tired. If the value you have quoted is correct and you get your weight down I would say you would be (in the US) a high Cat 1 or low to medium Pro (perhaps higher I am not sure). I would suggest losing weight, then testing yourself for an hour (or possibly 20 mins and note your average power as some people think that you can sustain 5% less than this for 1 hour ). You can use Andrew Coggans Power tables to find out where you stand (actually the longest test he quotes is 20 mins). If you don't have them I think you can get them through the Cycling Peaks Website. If not I will send them to you.

It is difficult to know but if Ullrich is 165 lb and produced 450 Watts for 1 Hour (both are plausible) then he has 6 Watts/Kg. However he may be extremely aero. Lactate threshold can be improved a lot but it takes time, John

Thanks for the quick reply.
The plan is to see how far i can take my cycling, i have uni to finish in the uk next april/may. I move over to france to race for a year in december 2006. As this is only my second full season of cycling i was interested to know what you people out there think of my test results.

I have come from a rugby background, hence the weight. Sustained power levels and weight loss is the real aim for the rest of this season and over the winter.
Only 2 more objectives this season: national u23 rr and a stage race in october.

After that i concentrate on losing the weight for next season and beyond.

Any more advice/help appreciated. I will look on the cycling peaks website for the power tables.

Chris

wardie2000 said:

Thanks for the quick reply.
The plan is to see how far i can take my cycling, i have uni to finish in the uk next april/may. I move over to france to race for a year in december 2006. As this is only my second full season of cycling i was interested to know what you people out there think of my test results.

I have come from a rugby background, hence the weight. Sustained power levels and weight loss is the real aim for the rest of this season and over the winter.
Only 2 more objectives this season: national u23 rr and a stage race in october.

After that i concentrate on losing the weight for next season and beyond.

Any more advice/help appreciated. I will look on the cycling peaks website for the power tables.

Chris

Chris,
Although I live in Salt Lake I am a Brit.37 years ago I played for British lions. I have a problems with weight too which is a pity because I love to race masters.John

I almost went to gloucester academy but choose university instead, a knee injury in my first year ended the rugby career!!

But i prefer the cycling now, and won't change it for anything. Just going to go as far as i can in cycling.

But you are quite right, once you have been built for playing rugby it takes quite a while to loose it, but i am slowly getting there. Fortunately i played wing/full-back.

Chris

I've had a very busy day (what rest day!!?) but it appears that if i read this correctly that the test you did was a stepped incremental test to exhaustion. each step was 3 minutes in duration, and the last full 3 minutes you completed (or perhaps the last part you completed less than 3 minutes and interpolated) gave you a score of 440 W. You haven't stated what the starting power was (and thus the duration of the test) and this will affect the results as would any acute training load.

In essence, if i've read this correctly (and i may not have), the 440 W is not your lactate threshold or 1 hour TT power (assuming the 440 W was you going to exhaustion). However, this score (440 W) would also *not* be your MAP. The 440 W would be less than you'd score in a MAP test (which is protocol dependent, as are all tests) and would conversely also be higher than LT or TT power.

The people that conducted this test should have explained these data and what the results mean. In the meantime we (here) would be guessing exactly what it means or exactly how it would compare to other data.

If you want to compare to other data you'd likely need the testers to interpret the data for you, or to use tests that are more readily interpreted. There's the power profile table of AC's which look at four different physiological measures, and the MAP profile tables that we have at RST on our website.

Finally, to clarify for John and others, the tables that Andy developed, the final variable *isn't* 20-minute power but 'functional threshold' (if memory serves me correctly again!). This is either 1-hour time trial power or *perhaps* (i had a feeling andy had changed the column) maximal lactate steady state (the power would be slightly less than 1-hr TT power).

Hope that all makes sense!
ric

The first message i ever sent on this subject stated that my threshold power was 380w not 440w.
The 440w was the last level i could complete and that was after 47mins.

But point taken on the rest.

ric_stern/RST said:

I've had a very busy day (what rest day!!?) but it appears that if i read this correctly that the test you did was a stepped incremental test to exhaustion. each step was 3 minutes in duration, and the last full 3 minutes you completed (or perhaps the last part you completed less than 3 minutes and interpolated) gave you a score of 440 W. You haven't stated what the starting power was (and thus the duration of the test) and this will affect the results as would any acute training load.

In essence, if i've read this correctly (and i may not have), the 440 W is not your lactate threshold or 1 hour TT power (assuming the 440 W was you going to exhaustion). However, this score (440 W) would also *not* be your MAP. The 440 W would be less than you'd score in a MAP test (which is protocol dependent, as are all tests) and would conversely also be higher than LT or TT power.

The people that conducted this test should have explained these data and what the results mean. In the meantime we (here) would be guessing exactly what it means or exactly how it would compare to other data.

If you want to compare to other data you'd likely need the testers to interpret the data for you, or to use tests that are more readily interpreted. There's the power profile table of AC's which look at four different physiological measures, and the MAP profile tables that we have at RST on our website.

Finally, to clarify for John and others, the tables that Andy developed, the final variable *isn't* 20-minute power but 'functional threshold' (if memory serves me correctly again!). This is either 1-hour time trial power or *perhaps* (i had a feeling andy had changed the column) maximal lactate steady state (the power would be slightly less than 1-hr TT power).

Hope that all makes sense!
ric

Ric,
I too may have got this wrong but Andys tables are for 5 sec, 1 min, 5 min and 20 min. That is the highest average power you can achieve at each time. I gather that 5% less than the 20 min power is about what you could do for 1 hour. I think Andy Coggan believes that this will correspond to lactate threshold but I can't remember his particular definition. A couple of mM maybe.

As for Chris's power. Like you I did not know the test. However I thought that he may have been driven to anaerobic levels in which case I thought that his power may have been inflated well over his lactate threshold or 1 hour sustainable power. I hope I got this right.
John

[email hidden said:

"]Ric,
I too may have got this wrong but Andys tables are for 5 sec, 1 min, 5 min and 20 min.

Andy has changed the last column variable several times -- the 20-mins is actually functional threshold, which is one hour power (or MLSS). i just can't recall which of the latter two it is.

Quoted post said:

That is the highest average power you can achieve at each time. I gather that 5% less than the 20 min power is about what you could do for 1 hour. I think Andy Coggan believes that this will correspond to lactate threshold but I can't remember his particular definition. A couple of mM maybe.

Myself and AC define LT virtually the same. If i'm in a lab i use 1 mmol/L over baseline level, which gives an LT of ~ 2.X mmol/L, whereas Andy uses (i believe) a fixed value of 2.5 mmol/L

Quoted post said:

As for Chris's power. Like you I did not know the test. However I thought that he may have been driven to anaerobic levels in which case I thought that his power may have been inflated well over his lactate threshold or 1 hour sustainable power. I hope I got this right.
John

assuming i understood chris's test correctly (i.e., some stepped test to exhaustion) then i'm well aware of the test. however, i have very limited data of people doing such tests, and consequently can't say that e.g., someone who reaches 440 W in that test would reach ~440 + X% in a MAP test or ~440 - Y% in a one hour TT.

Now that i've seen the some more of the test (like i said chris, i'm pretty busy at present and just flicking quickly through here) with a test that takes 47-mins to complete it'll undersestimate MAP a lot (as e.g., a VO2max test should be completed in ~ 15-mins) and then i have to wonder whether the test is continuous or discontinuous (and both will overestimate 1hr TT power).

Also, now that Chris has clarified to me that the 380 W is his threshold... i however, don't know how the tester is defining threshold...

bottom line is without knowing *exactly* what the test is and how various terms are defined we're taking a guess about what it means. all tests are very protocol dependent. in all honesty the testers should have answered chris's queries. certainly, that's what we do when we test...

ric

ric_stern/RST said:

Andy has changed the last column variable several times -- the 20-mins is actually functional threshold, which is one hour power (or MLSS). i just can't recall which of the latter two it is.

Once only, actually - although I did recently issue a version 3.0 of the tables in which the women's data have finally been completed the same way as the men's.

ric_stern/RST said:

Myself and AC define LT virtually the same. If i'm in a lab i use 1 mmol/L over baseline level, which gives an LT of ~ 2.X mmol/L, whereas Andy uses (i believe) a fixed value of 2.5 mmol/L

Correct. (The reason that I don't like the "1 mmol/L over baseline" criteria is that the baseline can be somewhat subjective, and in a poor test is ill defined.)

ric_stern/RST said:

assuming i understood chris's test correctly (i.e., some stepped test to exhaustion) then i'm well aware of the test. however, i have very limited data of people doing such tests, and consequently can't say that e.g., someone who reaches 440 W in that test would reach ~440 + X% in a MAP test or ~440 - Y% in a one hour TT.

Across all endurance sports, OBLA (i.e., the exercise intensity corresponding to a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol/L as measured after several minutes of exercise at that intensity during an incremental exercise test) seems to correspond fairly well to maximal lactate steady state, and hence ~1 h TT performance, on average. However, as the latter implies there is room for considerable interindividual differences, and there's some evidence to suggest that maximal lactate steady state usually occurs at a higher blood lactate concentration in cyclists. Thus, while it seems reasonable to suggest based on his test results that Chris could sustain 380 W for ~1 h, I'd only consider that a ballpark estimate. ("The best predictor of performance is performance itself." 🙂 )

The one thing that jumped out at me in reading Chris' post is the fact that the test was performed after he'd already ridden fairly hard that day...the possibility therefore exists that his OBLA has been overestimated due to low glycogen stores, and hence low lactate levels.

[email hidden said:

"]Ric,
I too may have got this wrong but Andys tables are for 5 sec, 1 min, 5 min and 20 min. That is the highest average power you can achieve at each time. I gather that 5% less than the 20 min power is about what you could do for 1 hour. I think Andy Coggan believes that this will correspond to lactate threshold

Since people were confusing 20 min power with "functional threshold power", I revised the tables to base the last column strictly on the latter. You can download the latest version from www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/profile.html.

As the 5% rule-of-thumb, I don't subscribe to it, or at least don't advocate its use. The problem is that people begin to view that factor as written in stone, when in fact there can be considerable interindividual variability.

acoggan said:

The one thing that jumped out at me in reading Chris' post is the fact that the test was performed after he'd already ridden fairly hard that day...the possibility therefore exists that his OBLA has been overestimated due to low glycogen stores, and hence low lactate levels.

i knew i'd fogotten to mention something in my brief reply! Right, back to my other work now!

thanks for the corretions

ric