Field Test Day

Field Test Day
--Unfamiliar with the terminology? Just a another way of expressing the boiling of every once of steam out of the engine in a 3 mile ride that is used to best determine what optimal power & heart rate levels one should train at for different speeds. Myself, I get into the techie/physiological side of biking as much as I do for the calming delight biking brings into a day.

So one of the first things I hear from people that see me riding with that funny oversized yellow hub one the rear wheel, “What’s your watts, man?” And henceforth comes the conversation of how watts are objective but also relative to each individual cyclist. Watts as a measure of power are only of any use if they can move the given weight at the satisfactory speed & distance. What I’m trying to say is this – a 200+lb rider who can crank out 400watts might not be able to contend with a 130lb rider who maxes out at 310 watts. I’m not trying to be exact with the math but rather illustrative that it’s the watts/lb that matter more than watts alone or weight alone.

It’s a great geeky thing that works as an awesome training tool. Going back to ’05 a couple of 3mile field test revealed that I could produce on average 302 watts – that’s blowing my brains out, going for broke for approximately 8 minutes leaving nothing behind. Now, that same power serves as the target range of 30 minute Tempo intervals.

Today I cranked out 368 watts on the first interval & 346 on the second interval (a 5-10% reduction is normal) which I’m pretty excited about.


Would I like to see that number higher? Of course, everyone wants higher wattage but there’s another element at work to keep in mind and that’s the duration at which you can keep the power up there. It helps to have big numbers but if you can't hold a high percentage of that for duration of the race, another person who has overall lower numbers but does hold up a higher percentage for the duration has a good chance of beating you. Have great numbers, but be able to do them a long time.
Great example – Tristan Schouten, he’ll be one of the first guys to tell you he can’t produce insanely high wattages, but why does he do so well? As my coach Josh Powers like to say about him, he lives well in the pain cave. Tristan can hold a high percentage of his max output better than a lot of other racers who may have higher top end wattage numbers than him.

So if the opportunity is ever there, make the investment in a PowerTap or other power measuring device. Great feedback and immediately responsive to changes in effort -- unlike heart rate monitoring.

Next up, I’m going to shed some light on the cyclist mentality of training that causes so many people to be missing the boat of how to actually be making themselves faster. Great read you’ll want to check out......