A week of tests…

Wow, it’s been a long week!! I had a bike FTP test on Tuesday…I do this test once/month to see if my bike power is improving. When I first got my powermeter (beginning of Dec) I tested my ftp power at 203watts. In January I retested at 211watts…a great improvement..so this week was my February test. This test includes a nice w/u with a 2x20’ interval with a 2’ recovery (easy) in between…you take the whole 42minutes and use the power over that entire time. So I rode hard (not too hard) for the 1st 20mins, averaged 217watts, for the recovery I was at 136watts and then for the 2nd 20min interval I held a whopping 228watts!! So (drumroll please….) my FTP is now 220watts!! A 10% improvement over two shorts months with only riding 2x/week!! So I am very happy with my test and I KNOW I am riding harder this winter than I ever have before. One other important statistic is my watts/weight ratio. With my latest ftp test I’m currently riding 3.28w/kg. Which is pretty average for a female rider. My goal is to get to 3.6w/kg…which would raise my ftp up to 240watts…I have a lot of work to do!!

So, test #2 this week was last night…a 1000yd swim time trial. We went over to the new BSC in Medford (nice facility!) with a brand new pool. We were TOLD it’s a “junior Olympic” pool, which puts it at 25m long (not 25yds) this will come into play later. So we warmed up some (not very much!) and started the TT, the goal was to swim at race effort (read: not a sprint!) you don’t sprint the swim in triathlon…it’s supposed to be a fairly relaxed pace. So the test went quickly (I’m used to swimming ~60mins or so at Masters) so this test flew by! I did the 1000m in 16:34. To convert it to 1000yds, the math is 1000yds in 15:05. WOW…I have seen some improvement since last season!! According to swim pace charts this puts my mile at approx. 26-27mins and an IM distance swim at 1:06-1:10 pace. I would be VERY pleased if that were the outcome in Sept!!

All roads lead to Madison!