Testing Information Thread
Several of you were asking, and since the guidance on testing is in the wiki, I am putting it over here for now. Enjoy!!!!
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Functional Testing is perhaps the single-most important activity you'll do inside EN. Very little matters around planning, strategery and setting goals if you don't actually understand where you are starting from. But that said, a test does not an athlete make...if your training rocks but you aren't seeing the results, please read the Testing Groupthink Thread [4.0 Forum].
Bike Test: 30-40 minute time trial
After a good warmup, which includes some hard efforts to open up your legs, do ONE, NOT BOTH of the tests below. You can test indoors or outdoors but do your best to make the test protocol and conditions as repeatable as possible. This is especially important for heart rate athletes, whose primary performance metric will be speed. As speed is very much affected by wind, you need to do your best to eliminate wind as a variable...yes, difficult to do, we know. Test in the morning, before winds pick up, or, better still, on a continuous climb where wind is not a factor at all.
Bike Test for Heart Rate Athletes:
- Warmup: 10-15' Easy, then 3 x 2' Hard/Fast, to open up your legs. Spin easy, until you're ready to drill it, and then...
- Test: Time Trial, for 40 minutes. Ride at the maximum speed you can sustain for 40 continuous minutes, as if you were racing. Record your average heart rate and speed for this time trial effort.
- Cool Down: just ride easy
Bike Test for Power Athletes:
- Warmup: see above
- Test: Start the interval function on your powermeter, then ride a 20' time trial, 2' rest/easy riding, repeat 20' time trial, stop the interval, for a total of 42'.
- Cool Down: ride easy
Bike Test for Computrainer Athletes:
- Same as above for all parts.
- Consider using one of the following Computrainer Course Files (courtesy of Linda Patch)
Process Data, Power Athletes:
Download your workout file into WKO+. Create a range for the 42' interval above - the 20' TT, 2' rest, 20' TT. The Normalized Power for this 42' range is your Functional Threshold Power (FTP). Note: if you have no idea what we just said, no worries, we can help. In Lesson #3 will give you a barebones explanation of all of this.
- Warmup: 15-20' Easy, then 3 x 30 seconds Hard/Fast, to open up your legs. When ready...
- Test: 5k Time Trial. Run at the maximum speed you can sustain for the full 5k, as if you were racing. Record your time, average heart rate, etc for this time trial effort.
- Cool Down: Easy jog / stagger / walk.
Enter your test distance (5k) and total time into the EN Data Tool. This will calculate your vDOT score as well as generate training zones based on Daniels' Running Formula.
Proper Pacing Description for Power Testing
Realize it will take 2-3 tests before you nail down the pacing, largely because you don't have a good number to sit on. IOW, your first test you might have an idea of what you'll do for the 42' but you don't really know. On the second test you can use the first test + lessons learned as a benchmark to guide you. You'll likely put it all together on the third test.
That said:
- Go out "relatively" easy. IOW, if your goal/you think you can do 230w for the test, going out at 230w will feel pretty comfortable. Don't worry, that will change soon enough
. I'd say you should feel that change at about 8' into the first interval. If you're beginning to hurt at 4-5', you already went out too hard. - You should start to find yourself looking at the watch at about 12'. At 16' it might take a couple ticks backwards...at 18', that last 2' creeps.
- Spin easy for 2' then repeat, using your watts from the first interval to provide you with a goal for the second.
- Might be a good idea to go a little under target for the first interval so you can back it up on the second.
- Again, if you're in a nightmare at 6-8' in the first interval, pull the plug and regroup. Either rest and start over or test another day.
Proper Pacing Description for 5k TT
Just like the bike test, you will get better at 5k testing.
You should build gradually through z2-3 in the first 6-8', settling in at mid z4 by minute 10, then watching this rise to z4/5 at minute 13 or so, then just sit there. For the second interval you'll likely start in z2, be at z4-5 by minute 8 and then hang on.
Comments
Neill,
Setting new peeps, members and trials, is a painfully slow manual process. We're getting it done, you'll receive notification when it's done. Thanks for your patience.
Hi team, question about run testing.
If you use an outdoor course vs. an indoor track, don't different conditions prevent comparability of the results? I'm not talking about a little breeze or small stuff, but rather the difference between testing now when it is 65 degrees and dry, vs. in January when it is 5 degrees vs. in the summer when it is 90 degrees and humid.
I don't know much about vDOT, but I thought I read somewhere that it is a condition-specific metric. I ran two half-marathons within 6 weeks of each other recently, both on very flat and fast courses, one warm (not hot) and humid vs. the other cool and dry, and the times differed by 2:16 (vDOT difference was 1.5).
Maybe this kind of difference is immaterial and within the expected precision of the testing. But it seems everyone's signatures have vDOT to the decimal point so I wonder if conditions should be factored in, or if I should be looking for an indoor track to do my tests.
Thoughts on this appreciated.
Cheers,
Matt
5k testing - is it better to use a TT (aka by yourself) or actually do a race?
I can NEVER put out near the results by doing a TT as I do in a race (I am slightly competitive). So do your plans assume it is a race or TT (for someone like me - who WILL get different results for each).
@Matt:
My $0.02 (which is probably all it's worth
) is that no matter the type of test (be it VDot, Power, LTHR, etc.) it is ALWAYS going to be somewhat specific to that day in terms of environmental and personal conditions (such as fatigue and motivation).
For example, I may test my VDot one week at 45 and then four weeks later at 44. At first blush, this looks like performance degradation, and it's easy to become dismayed. However, as you point out, if the first test was cool and dry while the second was hot and humid, perhaps my fitness has actually increased but the environmental conditions of the day reduced my performance.
Similarly, perhaps I felt unbelievably motivated and well-rested before my first test, but was unmotivated or un-rested before my second test. I may have improved my fitness over those 4 weeks, but simply failed to perform to potential on test day.
You are always having to evaluate the conditions of your test and "fudge" the results somewhat to try to get a true accounting of your fitness. The key is to not over-attribute the impact of your personal or environmental conditions to any one test. My general rule of thumb is that my numbers NEVER go down during OS. If I hit 315 W for my FTP in a test, then my zones are based on that number even if my next test shows 305 or 310. I will move up, but never down absent injury, layoff or a some other clearly anamolous factor.
I think as you start to pay attention to how certain conditions affect your performance on a day-to-day basis, you'll get better at understanding the true measure of your fitness following a test.
If you will race better then find a 5k and go run it.
Would it be best for me as an athlete living in Michigan to perform the "Bike Test" on the trainer considering our impending weather change?
Thanks!
I asked the same question in another thread. The answer was to test how you will train. So for the winter I will train indoors and therefore test indoors.
The results of your FTP or VDOT test will be used to generate your intervals on both the bike and the run and both with be pretty friggin' hard, especially VDOT. It's very important that you train according to the VDOT you have not the VDOT you'd like to have since the zones that Daniel's tables or the Data Tool will spit out are already designed to push you to your limits and going much harder could risk injury.