Establish your heart rate training zones via a Heart Rate Threshold test & then debrief on when / how to use each zone to optimise all your rides. 

Establish your power zones via an FTP test & then debrief on when / how to use each zone to optimise all your rides. 

Sports physiologists have created a test that calculates our maximum heart rate at our lactate threshold i.e. our body is working as hard as it can, whilst clearing out all the lactate acid in our blood (in layman’s terms, our body is producing energy faster & with much less oxygen, a bi-product of which is lactate acid, which ultimately inhibits the metabolic pathways used to create energy for our muscles).

If we know what this threshold is, by training in & around that ‘zone’ we can slowly allow our muscles to become more efficient at processing the lactate acid, thereby allow us to do more work (i.e. go faster) for longer. 

Similarly, if you have a power meter, there are various tests you can do to determine your current power ‘profile’, explore your threshold, maximal aerobic capacity, identify strengths and weakness and, being familiar with your power data, you can optimise future sessions accordingly and train smart!

This gives more and more people a greater understanding of what it takes to get up their local climb, or what they need to hold (watts) to mix it up with the world’s best cyclists. For the not-so-feint-hearted, you can also see just how out-of-reach the numbers of the world’s best are!