Crunching Numbers
(Perhaps Chapter 1(a) would be a more appropriate title, since we're still in the starting blocks)
If you're going to sign up for events that will require vast increases in stamina and conditioning it's probably helpful to put some numbers to where you are at the beginning. Saying 'I'm in pretty good shape' though possibly true is somewhat vague and let's face it, impossible to quantify. What you need is, a (painfully) honest evaluation of your baseline fitness, one that is accurate, and repeatable. What you want are hard numbers and someone to record and explain them to you. We happen to know of just such a person. His name is Thad but you may know him from previous blog entries as 'Pickle Juice' (or just 'Juice) owing to his near religious faith in the restorative properties of that particular briny liquid. Thad is (among other things*) a numbers man. Loves to produce them, loves to record them, loves to interpret them. Want to know where you stand conditioning-wise, or if your current training regimen is of any real benefit? Perhaps it's already good, but only good and could use some tweaking and fine tuning to eliminate weaknesses and strengthen your strengths. If so, then Thad is a person with whom you might spend an hour or two ... or more, depending on your masochistic tendencies.
*He's also an accomplished bike mechanic. A handy person to know as between Jennifer and I we have as many bikes as we have children. And like the children, the bikes require regular TLC to keep them happy and in tune. If Santa's workshop were dedicated to the bicycle it would look like Thad's garage. He's got more two-wheelers in there than the Schwinn bike shop that used to repair my flat tires for me when I was 8 years old. Also, the man works for trinkets. By my estimate he's done ~$150 worth of work on our various bikes (one that I don't even own anymore but sold at a great price mainly because of his Midas touch) already this year (and it's only May 1st) and received as payment a couple of water bottles and a plastic handlebar mount for his GPS. I say this not as a boast, I kinda wish he would let me float him a few clams to ease my conscience, but rather as a public shout out to his generosity, even if local bike shops curse his name and will hold him at least partially responsible if/when they go under. I'm assuming at some point that will change and he'll hang out his shingle officially and make bikes a business and not just a very time consuming hobby/labor of love. Until then, what you can give Thad in lieu of greenbacks is what I will inaccurately refer to as 'sweat equity'. If Thad is a numbers man, then give him the thing he loves. Let him hook you up to his power tap and push you to the point that you forget what a mensch he is and instead plot to bludgeon him with the first hard object you can get your hands on once you can breathe again and stand under your own power.
Which brings us to: The Threshold Test (also Functional Threshold Power test). Entire sections of your local bookstore could be filled with books dedicated to describing the different ways this can be tested and and why the data is useful. Explaining it in a way that's concise and manageable for a blog post is difficult and fraught with potential for disinformation and evident ignorance on my part. I'm OK with the appearing ignorant part. I've got enough medical training to understand the physiology of what's going on (ie it's not going to kill me, it will just make me wish I was dead) and that's good enough for me. If you're interested in a more detailed explanation (but by no means an exhaustive one) you can visit the website below and read all about it. For our purposes, the threshold test we use tells us, theoretically, what the maximum level of effort/energy (expressed in watts*) we can put into pedaling a bike for one solid hour before lactic acid begins to build up and the muscles fatigue (fail). So it's a measure of muscle strength and the ability of the body to provide oxygen to that muscle so it can continue to function.
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/what-is-threshold-power.aspx
*Tough to explain what 100 or 200 watts feels like unless you ride a bike with a power meter, but most pieces of exercise equipment, be they elliptical machines or stationary bikes, will have a watt feature if you are curious about the level of exertion we are talking about.
You don't perform the test itself very often, mainly because it's a pretty miserable experience (somewhere between having influenza and digging your own sprinkler trenches by hand). I'm sure there are as many techniques for testing thresholds as there are endurance sports, but in Thad's garage the apparatus of choice is the bike trainer with a power meter on the rear wheel. Riding a bike trainer is tedious on the best day, today is not the best day. Today will be uncomfortable. I'm reminded every time I test of the six fingered man's diabolical 'Machine' in the movie the Princess Bride:
The first half of the test consists of several power intervals of varying lengths with minimal cadence/power output requirements interspersed with rest periods. Still not sure what the point of this part is, other than maybe to anger you or begin the pummeling of your spirit to assure that your submission is complete and total. I would ask Thad but I'm afraid that the answer will be "No, point, I just like messin' with you."
The crucial elements of the test are the final two eight minute maximum sustainable effort intervals with ten minutes of 'recovery' between the two.
During the build up intervals, if you drop below the pre-programmed cutoff power/cadence settings the Machine beeps at you to let you know that your suffering quotient is too low (and that one year has just been sucked from your life) Thad (the six fingered man) leans in so you can tell him (for research purposes) how it feels. Please be as specific as possible when describing your pain (remember, it's for research).
Things go from bad to much, much worse from there. Perhaps eight minutes all out (rinse and repeat) sounds fairly innocuous, but try it some time. It's like pedaling into a storm cloud of misery and time stretches out to a ridiculous degree. Eight minutes feel like they can be measured with a sundial instead of a stopwatch. Cue up your two or three favourite power songs, the tried and true ones you go to when you need a final burst on the homestretch. You will find that what at one time was a reliable ten minutes of inspiring music will feel as un-ending as Wagner's Ring Cycle (or Iron Butterfly's In A-Gadda-Da-Vida for the blue-collar set). But even if it does get your adrenaline pumping, that will only take you so far. At some point you will confront the limits or your conditioning (or lack thereof) and that meeting is bound to be an unpleasant one regardless of how much you've trained. In fact, this may be the one test that punishes, rather than rewards your meticulous workout regimen. Your pain potential increases in direct proportion to your preparation for the test.
What the ear buds do accomplish, aside from the Pavlovian-esque nausea you will feel the next time you pull up your power playlist on the old ipod, is to completely cut you off from how you sound to the casual observer when you find yourself in extremis. Thad makes noises like a wounded sea lion when you push him to his threshold (this per his wife who came out to check what had happened because from the sounds he was making he must have been working under the car and had it fall on him). No clue what I sound like when I'm on the Machine but push Jenn to the brink and the only thing that comes close to what you hear is the Lamaze class we attended briefly during our* first pregnancy. It gets much louder after the video ends, so much so that you wonder if an unsuspecting passer-by might call 9-1-1 to report an mugging. It's all right though, if it sounds painful, even unbearable, you know you did it correctly. The Machine (and Thad) will know if you've been holding something in reserve because your power curve will reflect that. Finish strong (like I did the last time I tested) and the graph of your effort will give you away and Thad will look at you with a jaundiced eye (and maybe actually charge you cash for your next bike tune-up). By the time the bell (death knell?) sounds, you should be hanging on by your fingernails with nothing more than vapors in the tank. When you're done you should feel completely wrung out, like you might need a walker to get around for a few days.
*Yeah I used the pronoun 'our' to describe a pregnancy, it was a team effort, though I'll allow that Jenn did most of the heavy lifting on that project
Jenn's test showed a Functional Threshold Power of 185 watts (about 5 watts less than the test she did just before the Gran Fondo race we did last summer). Not bad considering you can count the bike rides she's done this year on one hand (and you can leave out the thumb). She's mostly been running (and swimming). If we did an equivalent test on a treadmill, I would imagine that number, already good, would be even higher.
My Threshold Power was ~280 watts, down 10 from my the aforementioned halcyon days of summer 2012, but up 10 watts from the test I did around the first of this year.
Bottom line: We both have room to improve. As a couple of middle-aged-would-be athletes our ceiling is not as high as it might have once been, but we obviously haven't reached our current pinnacle yet either. More (unfortunately) on the threshold test as the season goes on.
Check back with us, we'll be here (all summer),
Jenn and Steve
On a lighter note ...
Seeds of Boston?
Monday the 22nd, Jenn ran in a charity fund-raising 5k for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. It was a crazy-busy week which included a drive to Edmonton (17 hours each way) to visit her grandfather and retrieve her parents, and she hardly had time for training runs (I think she may have ran around a few truck stops in southern Alberta at some point) never mind a charity fun-run, but it was a cause she believed in and a race in which she hopes to one day participate, so ...
Not her first choice of shirt colour (upside, it's highly visible to any traffic approaching from the front or behind) and she's going to have to work on her 'selfie' photo technique if she's going to keep contributing to the blog. But the BOSTON logo was what she was shooting for, so mission accomplished (I guess).
Hundreds of runners (Jenn would know the approximate number) showed up to the impromptu event. Organized through social media in less than a week's time. Runners are passionate individuals. If I didn't know that already I'm beginning to learn.
'Old Glory' (appropriately enough) served as the starter flag. And though the Canadian Government still recognizes Jenn as one of theirs (dual citizenship), On this occasion she is running for US patriots everywhere but especially those that run in Boston on Patriot's Day.
One day she hopes to be one of them.
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