NOS Bike Week 5 - TEST WEEK (No Pressure)

Thanksgiving is over. How did you do with maintaining your momentum on working out? How did you do with your body composition. I ask NOT to make anyone feel bad about their holiday, The ONLY purpose of those questions are to ask that each of us OBJECTIVELY assess where we are as we go into test week.

The only way to get a good test result is to have realistic goals and stretch to reach them. If you took off a bit for he holidays and then panic workout too hard to catch up this week, that can blow your test. The Holidays happened, assess your situation and move on, no blame, no judgement.

Reading back on that it sounds like it was written by someone feeling guilty for really screwing up over the holidays but, actually, I did pretty well except for the part where I had no bike and had to run.

The schedule calls for Bike test on Tuesday. I am set to race Tuesday and Thursday this week so I will probably do the Bump race Sunday or Monday night for my test. If you have never done it, I highly recommend the bump race for a test protocol. I have found that I have much better success getting sustained high power output when I am chasing someone rather than when I am fighting to keep myself going near the end of a 20 min interval. It is a flat race in Zwift (sign up using the companion app). that lasts about 30 min. Some folks go hard at the beginning and then try to hold on for 20 minutes. I have had my best luck trying to ride my goal watts for the FTP test steadily and hanging on the wheels of whoever I can for as long as I can. Holding back at the beginning and building over the course is not as successful in my experience due to the profound effect of losing the draft early and finishing by myself.

Let's see some test results up in here!