2010.50 - Gettin' ready for next season

Holy crap. As you might have noticed, I haven't been paying any attention to my training plan anymore, so it comes as quite a suprise that we're on week 50 now. tomorrow is week 51! In two weeks my 2010 season will be over! wow!

I've been working on doing some power testing and getting my ATP set up for next season. I'll post when the ATP is done, but here's how the power testing has been going:

Sunday: Did a graded threshold test today. Here's the setup: starting at 100W, increase by 20W every minute until the power level cannot be maintained. Looking at the data real quick, it looks like my LTHR is still around 175, with a FTP between 240 and 260W. One interesting trend that I noticed is that the final test levels became harder much quicker than the last time I tested. I wonder if this means I did not warm up as thoroughly as last time. Alternately, the last test I did used speed in 1mph increases instead of power, so maybe a 1mph increase is less intensive than a 20W increase. Here's the gconnect linky: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/56784834

hopefully I can do some different testing soon to help me get some better numbers.

LTHR test

Alright, well in the end of november, I completed two separate tests to determine LTHR. The first was as close to a half hour TT as I could complete on LI without having to stop. It ended up closer to 20 minutes, and I think I started out too fast. The end result was an avg HR of 183 bpm. With a little factoring involved, I figured that puts me around 171-175 bpm LTHR. On 25 november, I completed a graded test which revealed an apparent LTHR of 179-180. Thanksgiving day I tested this by riding at around 180 for a long stretch at the end of our thanksgiving ride that we hold around here. my legs were toast by the end, so i figure 180 is a bit high. I figure I'll just set it as 175 for now until I can get more data.