Hi

VeloTron

Another week of the VTWinterPlan comes to a close, a bit down on hours and mileage but with the weather the way it's been that is just unavoidable. Managed to compensate pretty well with some good sessions and still finished up with around 145 "miles".

Continued today with my blood lactate measurements and was again pleased with the outcome. The last test was done after a session @ 85% of FTP and gave me a reading of 1.7mmol/l and today's session @ 80% of FTP gave me a reading of 1.4mmol/l which is pretty much exactly what I would have expected.

These results may be what I would expect but I remain delighted with them because they are low readings when I'm actually riding at reasonably respectable wattages and they are a lot lower than they were some while back. It's just nice to have some sort of "evidence" that even though my peak wattages have not changed a great deal there is some physiological change going on. What matters is that this may be a number on a meter but it translates into me being able to go harder for longer without discomfort. My approach to training may not be that which is advocated in some quarters, but it is delivering the adaptations I require, and there is more to come when my Spring training kicks in.

Interesting to also note that the lower blood lactate today was recorded with a slightly lower TSB than for the previous test. Yesterday's exertions do not seem to have had an adverse effect on the readings even though fatigue is a known cause for elevated blood lactate levels, maybe this suggests that I'm recovering Ok, the human body is very complicated so who knows!

ATL: 66.7 CTL: 65.5 TSB: -1.8

[Uploaded 17/01/2010 22:17:59]