Fit for Purpose?

I'm writing today's entry at midday, because I'm feeling very virtuous for having already done a fair bit of exercise this morning.

I did an hour and a half of yoga (after cycling to the gym of course), and then did a 15 minute session on one of the exercise bikes. That's obviously not very long, but there was a purpose to it.

From some of the reading I've been doing, it seems like the best measure of fitness is your Heart Rate (HR) at a particular level of power output. For example - at a constant power output of 150W, my heart rate might be 150 at the beginning of my training programme - but by the end, when outputting 150W, my heart rate might only be 120 or something (I don't really know what a good mark to aim at is, so I just picked that last figure out of the air). I want to try and track this measure throughout my training so I thought I'd give it a go today.

I did a 3 minute warm-up at 75W, then did 5 min at 100W, 5min at 150W and a 2-3 minute warm-down at about 80W.

The way I increased my power output was by increasing the resistance on the bike. It turned out that I was putting out 100W at effort level 5 and 150W at effort level 7.

The results were:

100W - HR 139

150W - HR 163

Just for interest - but I think your "recovery" also gives a different indication of fitness - after 2 minutes of warmdown:

80W - HR 139

I don't really know, but I'm pretty sure those are not very good figures. I know I'm not even at my own normal level of fitness at the moment, so I'm doing my best to get back there.

Also, I know that the monitors on the machines at the gym aren't particularly accurate, so I'm looking at getting a proper Heart Rate Monitor. At the moment, the Polar CS300 is my favourite. I like the fact that you can wear it as a "watch" in the gym, or mount it on a bike, and it seems to have all the features I need.

It will be interesting to see how my fitness improves over the next few months anyway. I think this 15 minute test will be a good one to do after I've done one of my normal yoga or pilates classes, when I'm already loose, but not fatigued in a cardio-vascular sense.

I want to continue doing the yoga and pilates classes as much as possible, because I think the stretching and flexibility will be good for my cycling, and the core strength work will also provide a good base for getting the power out through my legs. At the moment I'm also going to a ski-fit class on Thursdays, which is surprisingly hard work but also concentrates on the core and lower body, so I think that'll also compliment my cycling work.

I'm fairly clear in my mind that I'm not really bothered about getting a good time in the etape, I just want to finish. However, I also know that with challenges like this, there's no real substitute for getting "miles in your legs", so I'm going to do my best to start piling those on as early as possible.