After signing a few forms, which basically state that if my ticker conks out mid test it's not Sportstest's fault and after a brief chat about goals and objectives the good docktor measures your height and weight, draws a few crosses on you with a marker pen and gets out his callipers to measure body fat. This is the easy bit.
The next bit is probably going to hurt. While you climb onto your trusty steed which has been fixed to a turbo while the Doc(Dr, docktor,doc I've exhausted that one so from now on I'll just refer to him as Garry as he was actually a very pleasant bloke and not a sadistic lunatic) busies himself at the controls, a few laptops with lots of nice graphs and numbers on the screens, you start a gentle warm up building up to 120 watts and holding it, which means staring at one of the screens and keeping the cross in the middle of the vertical line, if it drops you have to pedal harder, if it goes up you slow down. Garry then puts a mask on, (on me, not himself) and the tension on the turbo is cranked up and keeping the cross in the middle of the scale and holding it there is becoming harder as you try to find a comfortable gear as you progress to 200 watts and hold it. The warm up and first exercise are about 15 mins. A bit of easy pedaling and then its the big one, the max HR test. This starts in the same way as the previous work out but instead of stopping at 200 watts you just keep going, Garry says you should last anywhere between six and twelve minutes. Once you get back up to 200 watts the resistance on the turbo is gradually cranked up and pretty soon things just ain't fun anymore, Garry turns the screen and HR moniter off and suddenly with no distractions your in a whole world of pain, Garry gives constant encouragement to keep you going, your head down and swaying on the bike, your legs are burning up.... " C'mon hold it for just 30 more seconds" the evil doctor advised and then you hit your limit and suddenly all your power suddenly drains away. My first HR max test and actually it wasn't as bad as I though it would be. I maxed out at 196bpm. You warm down, have a nicely chilled recovery drink and the Garry explains his findings so here they are.......
"Your endurance is phenominal"; sounds promising, but as I dont have any immediate plans to ride to Scotland or do an audax this isnt going to help me in a race and is probably the result of doing two long CR's on Sat and Sun. So I'm good at burning fat but my max aerobic power is only 277 watts and it should be around 280 - 320 and at 61.5 kg that gives me a power ratio of 4.50 watts per kg. My body fat is 9%, I've let myself go a bit of late, too much guiness, but 9% apparrently is a good percentage for an athlete. It could go down to 6% but as a 4th cat that would be taking things a bit too seriously and the performance gains would be minimal untill I get my power out put up.
My sub maximal effiency is 16.86% (how much oxygen I utalise to keep my going forward on a bike) this should be more like 20%.
There's other numbers, the meanings of which were explained to me, but I've forgotten so if any one wants to translate them into hard facts I'll post them .
So the out come of all this is a personalised training plan which concentrates on 90 -120 mins endurance @149 - 159 bpm twice a week and various threshold training intervals @169 - 179bpm 3 times a week with as many races as I want.
If your not sure how to train, which I wasn't or in fact what aspect you need to concentrate on etc a sports test is highly recommended. There not cheap, mine was £150 but the information you get is invaluble.
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