What have I lost?

robkit said:

i have just started serious training for next year, having taken a "light" november that became a fair bit lighter than hoped for due to a bout of flu that had me feeling sick as a dog for basically 2 weeks.

anyway, i decided to try and guage the state of my fitness by doing a circuit i've ridden several times throughout the season and studying differences in power numbers between the season best performance (sept) and today. this is a 4 hour circuit with a few 3-5 min hills, one 25 min climb, some very steep shorter hills, generally very hard. (for those who know it, i'm talking about the peak district in the uk where snake pass is the biggie).

max minute power is down about 20 watts
5 min power is down about 30
20 min power is down a wopping 50 watts (pretty much the gain i acomplished between april and september!)..however i didnt seem to have a problem holding the "threshold" heart rate i would always look to hold for a 20 min effort.

since my understanding is that power over anything but the shorter durations comes from VO2max x threshold does this mean i've lost everything from VO2max??

was this your 1st ride back on the ride after your illness? Sounds like a tough way to get back in the saddle if so!

5min power is ~ Vo2max and you've lost 30W while 20 MP is threshold to slightly above depending on your duration anchor-point. Losing 50W there is likely partly due to lowered Vo2 but also in the % of Vo2max you can hold.
So both Vo2max and threshold ...

I'm sure it'll come back with good health and good training ...

rmur

FWIW, I had a "light" month in October (basically just weekend club rides) and by the end of the month noticed a pretty significant drop in sustainable power. Actually, what I noticed most was more difficulty breathing after ~5 mins at FT power or above and my HR stayed high longer than in September. But, after a pretty strong set of workouts in November I'm now above my end-of-season FT by a considerable amount. My speculation is that I detrained VO2MAX fairly significantly in October but recovered it quickly in November.