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One important aspect of training for anything is you have to know what your starting with and a way to determine if you are making improvements. For bike racing I like to use the Carmichael Training Systems field test as outlined by Chris Carmichael in his book The Ultimate Ride
I did the field test on my indoor trainer (I always do the field test on my trainer so weather and road conditions are not a factor). I used my bike computer and heart rate monitor to collect the data.
To do the field test I warmed up for 10 minutes with two short hard intervals during the warm up to get the blood flowing and prepare my body for the test effort. I then rested for a few minutes until my heart rate had dropped down a bit and I was breathing normally. While I rested, I reset my heart rate monitor and bike computer so I could collect accurate data. I then started the test which is two 3 mile efforts with 10 minutes of active recovery between the efforts. You use the numbers from the test with the highest average heart rate. Here is the data I collected from my field test:
- Average Heart Rate: ——————— 180 Beats Per Minute
- Max Heart Rate: —————————– 188 Beats Per Minute
- Average Cadence: ————————— 75 RPM
- Perceived Exertion (1-10): ————- 9
- Time to Complete Each Effort: —— 00:12:56
So what do you do with this data? Well you use the Max Heart Rate, Average Cadence, Perceived Exertion, and Time to Complete Each Effort to simply compare with future field tests. You use the Average Heart Rate to calculate different training zones so you can target specific aspects of your fitness and design a well rounded training plan.
From the test data above I was able to come up with these training zones for my specific fitness according to the Carmichael Training Systems method:
- Foundation Miles Heart Rate Zone: < 160 Beats Per Minute
- Endurance Miles Heart Rate Zone: < 164 Beats Per Minute
- Tempo Heart Rate Zone: 158-162 Beats Per Minute
- Steady State Heart Rate Zone: 165-169 Beats Per Minute
- Climbing Repeats Heart Rate Zone: 171-175 Beats Per Minute
- Recovery Heart Rate Zone: 117-126 Beats Per Minute
As your fitness improves with a regular training plan you will need to do the field test again so you can adjust your training zones accordingly. If you don’t retest and adjust you will most likely plateau, not able to make new gains. So I redo the test every 4 weeks or so.
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