Tag: fitnesstest

I’m ready to race

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“Where’s my medal?” I exclaimed as I walked in the door. No response. “Where’s my dang medal?” I repeated, giggling. John was sitting in the office, barely paying attention to my antics. He looked up after I came huffing through the doorway, a huge smile on my face, a rush of endorphins in my blood stream. “How did it go?” He asked. “It” was a race simulation that my coach Vince had cooked up for me. “Aaawe-soome!” I sang in reply. Finally, I had gotten to “race.” Thanks to a commitment to recovering my leg from the chronic ITBS that …

Test day: Going ALL OUT

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I logged in to my Training Peaks account, looked at my training schedule for the day. The title read: “Swim, Field Test.” I felt the nerves almost immediately, as my (too many) years of schooling produce a almost automatic response to the word TEST. Will I pass?! Since I started training with Vince in October, I’ve noticed improvements with my swim. But, now we were going to make it official with a formal test. Oh, the pressure! The workout included a warmup, followed by two time trial efforts of differing lengths. In the description for the workout, Vince had written, …

Test anxiety: Finding my functional threshold power

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On Wednesday, I took my first ever “functional threshold power” test. The FTP is a 30-minute test, using my CompuTrainer, which is designed to measure the average wattage (or power) I can maintain while cycling for 30 minutes (CP30). The above image illustrates the results of this test. (Side note: I don’t have a polar heart rate strap yet, required for CompuTrainer HRM, so the HR data is below, imported from my Garmin HRM file.) Fitness tests are not new to me. I rowed crew in high school, and we had regular tests of our fitness on the ergometers (rowing …