I've been dreading doing the fitness test; I did one last fall and it wasn't pretty, but I have been able to ride outdoors a lot more this winter in Florida (for newcomers: I lived in Montana last winter and did not ride between October 15 and June 13). Yesterday I was out riding and some guy blew by me. I thought to myself: "This will not stand" and I found, much to my surprise, that I was able to pick up my pace to 300W and hold it for a few minutes. I caught him and he was not happy, so I let him go...
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
With that, I decided to do a fitness test this AM. The complete ride file is attached. There was a light tail wind for the ride. I warmed up for about 10 minutes prior to the test, and then blasted off.
You will see the test as the second interval in the ride file.
You'll note that at two places my power drops to zero. This was at stoplights. I used the pause feature of the Fit Test (click center button) to not screw-up my test.
You'll see that I was too fast at the beginning and died a bit right in the middle. Now, I am not being coached by anyone and normally I just ride for fun and distance, but this ride file definitely tells me to focus on maintaining my pace in the middle of the test. I had a bit of legs at the end, though I found I was more limited by my lungs than by my legs.
I was aiming for a fitness level 3 but only got to a 2; that's the bad news. The good news is that my W/KG was 2.31, up from 2.15 last fall. My average watts were 240, up 20W from last fall.
It is EXTREMELY CLEAR what I need to do in order to improve; more cycling, less eating. That is what I am working on now and I am going to use the built-in interval workouts to aid in my training.
I figured that by being the first to post here I could set the low bar for everyone else to brag against.
Let's see some more files and have some more discussion. And as the summer progresses maybe I'll make another posting, this time with better results. Boyd says that a fitness level 3 allows me to say I'm a Cat 5 cyclist. If so then I suspect that when I get there many of you will move on to a different sport!
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)