NFCC Turbo 2014/15 Session #1

Wednesday 5th November was the first of this winters turbo sessions and as in previous years the session was used as a field test to set riders Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (LTHR) or Functional Threshold Power (FTP) and calculate the training zones that will be used for the rest of the winters training.

For those of you using heart rate zones if you were able to produce a consistent maximum effort over the 30 minute interval I would not expect those values to change much over the winter unless you are new to training. For those using power I would expect change in FTP over the winter so would recommend repeating the test every 4-8 weeks.

For those wishing to repeat the test the protocol followed was:

20 minute warm up, we used the standard British Cycling 20 min warm up

Time	Cadence (RPM)	Instruction/Focus
5 minutes	90	Smooth pedalling
2 minutes	95	Smooth pedalling
2 minutes	100	Smooth pedalling
2 minutes	105	Smooth pedalling
1 minute	30 seconds	110 Smooth pedalling
30 seconds	120-130	Maintain form
2 minutes	90	Relax and recover
6 seconds	150+	Max rev out
1 minute	90	Smooth pedalling
6 seconds	150+	Max rev out
1 minute	90	Smooth pedalling
6 seconds	150+	Max rev out
2 minutes 42 seconds	90	Relax and recover

Followed by 30 minute maximum effort

For LTHR use average heart rate of last 20 minutes

For FTP use average power of 30 minutes

To calculate training zones I suggest the methods used by Hunter / Allen and Joe Friel. I shall be using their definition of training zones for the classes this winter.

For subsequent sessions it will be useful to calculate these zones as the training efforts will be geared to them. Either put them into your bike computer or print them out and put a copy on your stem.

Example: my average heart rate over the last 20 mins of the test was 156
Therefore my zones are as follows:

Zone 1 < 126
Zone 2 126-139
Zone 3 140-144
Zone 4 145-154
Zone 5 155-159
Zone 6 160-165
Zone 7 >166

Zone	Name	% of FTP	Heart rate % LTHR
1	Active Recovery	<55%	< 81% LTHR
2	Endurance	56-75%	81% to 89% of LTHR
3	Tempo	76-90%	90% to 93% of LTHR
4	Lactate Threshold	91-105%	94% to 99% of LTHR
5	VO2 Max	106-120%	100% to 102% of LTHR
6	Anaerobic Capacity	121-150%	103% to 106% of LTHR
7	Sprint Power / Neuromuscular Power Supra-maximal	>150%	>106% of LTHR