Thursday Training

Hi

High resistance session tonight. Went Ok, managed to squeeze out a bit more power at the end but the result of this was a bit more of a fall off at the end, never mind. The most important thing is that I am now happy dealing with this session and I managed tonight to add another small piece to the lactate jigsaw, quite an important one I feel. Slowly adding to my knowledge of myself and my understanding of what is really happening as I toil away! The outputs of tonight's session are shown below:

1. 90 RPM 320W
2. 90 RPM 320W
3. 85 RPM 300W
4. 85 RPM 300W
5. 80 RPM 290W
6. 80 RPM 290W
7. 75 RPM 290W

I took a blood lactate measurement tonight at the end of one of my HR efforts when I had been riding at 300W for 3 minutes having increased the wattage from the effort start for 2 minutes, I had in effect done a 5 minute effort. The results of the 300W snapshot are shown below:

Power output: 300W
Heart rate: 165BPM
Blood Lactate: 5.1 mmol/l

This is interesting, I think it tells me 2 things. It confirms that at HRs in the 165 range are well above LT and it also confirms and supports the previous 300W reading I took which gave me a blood lactate reading of 4.2mmol/l. The higher reading tonight is almost certainly the result of having just done 2 efforts at a higher power output, 320W, which will have resulted in the higher reading. I think it *suggests* that it might take longer for blood lactate to fall after overcooking it say on a long climb than I suspected.

So, I reckon that the long 150BPM (probably up to 155 but full test will confirm) sessions and some sessions with shorter periods at about 160-165 will deliver results and this seems to fit well with the current HR and L2 arrangements. I'm glad I have backed off from the long sessions at 170BPM I was trying to do. My blood level must have been up in the 6+ area, no wonder it hurt trying to do long intervals at that! Working at that level was almost certainly the reason for the higher levels of fatigue I was experiencing, I certainly feel more ready to train now rather than miserable and demotivated.

At some point I am going to test my blood lactate at a cadence of 90 producing say 275W and compare it to my blood lactate at a cadence of 75 producing the same wattage, I think the results will be lower at the higher cadence. I'll do this when I have a better collection of preliminary data and a clearer understanding of the whole picture.