Improving your bike LT by 5% in 2 weeks

As probably my last session before Vättern, I did anothor bike LT test as per Coggan:

• Warm up with 3* 1 Minute high cadence
• 5 Min “As Hard as you can” – I have a nice long uphill for that, then recover a bit by going easy
• LT Test is 20 Min “Best effort” (mostly flat, with some short “power uphills”)

Your LT wattage is the Average Watts – 5% (because LT is usually measured/defined as “as hard as you can go for an hour”).

After recovering from Rennsteig, I did my first LT test on May 23rd:

• 255 Average Power (257 Normalized Power, so I was quite even in my effort)
• HR average at 148 beats
• covered 12km with an average speed of 36 km/h

Yesterday (June 8th), I did another one:

• 269 AP (273NP)
• 142 HR (HR probably a bit depressed after a long ride the day before)
• 12,83km, average of 38,5 km/h (mostly a factor of the wind blowing in the proper direction)

Summing up, I improved my LT from 242w to 255w – an improvement of over 5% in just two weeks.

Here’s the training I did in those two weeks:

• 2 longer rides (125k and 88k)
• 3 medium long rides at ~2 hours
• 5 recovery rides (“spin” for an hour)
• 2 interval sessions (with 4-5 minutes of intensity)

Basically, I rode a lot (at least for my standard) and also added some intensity. I also made sure that on my longer rides I tried to ride to a “steady” pace (instead of my usual “just ride” pace"). This seemed to do the trick for me.

But still, even with “smart” training 5% improvement is a lot and probably not repeatable (even within a longer block of say 4-8 weeks). I guess most of the improvement is due to the fact that I was starting quite low (having almost only been running this year), and the numbers are still a bit lower than what I was seeing last year (LT at 260w – but still quite close!). It seems to show that a lot of the “base endurance” can be transferred over from running to cycling, and that a relatively small amount of riding (total bike volume this year is at 830km) allows me to get to a decent level.

So I think I’ll be okay for Vättern, but that there is still a big unknown .. 300k is a bit different than my longest ride this year of 125k.

But once again, I’m confident and looking forward to it! That’s a good sign and all can ask for this close after Rennsteig. Hopefully the weather will be dry – weather report looks a bit shaky.