I am following the century training plan. However, I believe in the value of long endurance rides and having a strong aerobic base. In order to test my base fitness I want to perform a cardiacic drift test / test how much my heart rate drifts over the course of a 4 hour zone two ride. Usually, I would be doing this outside. Due to bad weather I plan on moving the test inside. Has anyone ever done such a test on the trainer, what did you place importance on and did you make any changes to the regular testing protocol? Also, are the results comparable? I plan on cooling with a fan and open windows. Furthermore, I am considering reducing the ride time to 3.30h due to the increased strain /constant intensity when riding the trainer.
Something to remind you to drink at a prescribed rate. Drink water no fuel.
Erg mode for a flat unchanging pace at your aerobic z2 ceiling.
Cadence monitoring to keep you in a 10 rpm range
Boring reality tv like the Great British Bake off.
Ride for 2 hours and 40 minutes. Statically if you are in shape drift should be linear out to about 5 hours so no need to do more than 2.5 hours of data. More won’t hurt but the slope of the line should stay consistent. Some of that has to do with the precision of the HR monitors, I assume you don’t have access to an EKG for the test.
Throw out the first 10 minutes of data.
Plug the data into WKO4 or Golden Cheatah and see how you did.
If you want to test zone 4 make the ride at Z4 floor, make it 30 minutes and throw out the first 10.
(If you don’t have the tools you can send me a fit file and I can send you your graph.).
Dehydration is probably the biggest factor that adversely affects aerobic decoupling.
Like any test, consistency will be key to replicate to get comparable results. Just thinking if this is the first decoupling test on a trainer it might show way more than 5% just due to missing the hydration. It might take a number of trials to get a valid test is all I’m saying…
