Lactate Testing
An Update on my Progress
The previous post on lactate testing talked about it about the process of testing and how to analyse the results. I also talked about my plan and was looking forward to re-testing as I was getting much stronger.
Unfortunately, things got a little derailed! I (like many others) suffered some post-viral complications from my Covid infection in June…so another 2 weeks off the bike.
So Where are we Now?
Well, after 2 weeks of the bike, I sensibly started with short Z1 rides and began to feel my way back to fitness. Part of the difficulty I and many others have found is that it’s hard to know what’s going on with our own bodies!! It certainly doesn’t seem to react to training in the same way and day-to-day form is much harder to predict.
The GOOD NEWS is that I’m feeling better much more quickly this time. So training has been back for 2 weeks and feeling good…so I decided to re-test and see where I am.
I could see on my rides that my LT1 and LT2 had dropped back down a fair way again. So I really wanted to get another lactate test done so my training is well-targeted for the next block….especially since I can’t do anything like the volume I used to do yet, what I do get to do needs to be as good as I can make it!!
Lactate Testing – The Results
So, you can see the results of the lactate testing on the right. The table shows the raw data and then two graphs of that data, one on my own excel spreadsheet and one using Exphyslab.com.
Now I didn’t go to max, as I’m not convinced my body can take it yet, so I stopped the test when I knew I was over LT2.
You can see pretty clearly the breakpoints, with LT1 being around 160 and LT2 around 220. This fits with the feelings I’ve had on recent training rides. Though it’s a little depressing to see numbers that are low for me, it’s the reality and there’s no point in ignoring it.
So What’s the Plan?
So the plan is to try and ride 5 times a week, but listen to my body and back off if needed and take an extra day…which happened today!!
To start with 4 rides will be easy Z1 rides below LT1. Then once a week, I’ll do some sweet spot efforts at 90% of LT2.
It’s a pretty basic plan, but I know I can’t do much more at the moment and REALLY don’t want to have more illness.
Covid literally ripped through all my goals for the year, and so my focus is not on a particular race or ride, but to get back to the fitness I need to manage the training volume and load that I enjoy.
The winter is not far away, so there’s no rush. I feel like my body is responding better this time around, so if that continues a re-test will need to be done sooner than normal, so I can keep the zones up to date.
I’ll update with progress when it happens 🙂
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