Sort of took a couple of decades off.
Trying to figure out HR and power zones, so I have been settling in on 1/2- 1 hour at 120 BPM, with some up to 130-140 as there are some hills on the way back.
Been thinking of a a lactate test to get a handle on it.
About 2 months on the bike with 3x/week and sometimes 4x.
Legs are also giving out easily, so I am doing something towards getting ready for long term and short term plans.
Welcome back! Honestly wouldn’t worry about lactate test. After that long a break I would have thought just riding regularly and throwing in some harder efforts on those hills is going to carry on yielding improvements for quite a while before you start to plateau. If you do want to get more structured and serious then just a ramp test will give you some decent zones to work with. Or if you haven’t subscribed to TR then do a 20 minute hard effort and multiply the average power by .95 will work as well. I know very few amateur athletes who have ever had a lactate test done, and even fewer who are using lactate data properly to inform their training.
Thank @cartsman - I basically want to not overshoot (or undershoot) the training.
The indoor bike is a bike tiresome and easier to find excuses to dismount from the saddle. So always needing to make the PRE more to get into a decent HR zone.
On the road, it is a bit easier to overshoot for me as I have no control over the geography, and the route home is what it is. And the RPE is not as high, but the HR is skyrocketing.
I’ll look for the ramp test - thanks.
I did a ramp VO2 and Lactate test and got an FTP out if it and the zones to be in.
Today I changed out to a smaller set of chain rings and threw a new chain.
The hills do not give me a lot of options for which zone to be in, as there is a minimum forward speed (or I fall over).
I did find that zone-2 did not feel that great on the stationary, and zone 3 was worse… some unattractive combo of motivation, and boredom precluded much pushing, but I did some interval Sweet Spot sessions.
On the actual road, today’s ride was 75% zone 3, and the 25% was downhill at Zone-1… which went faster so 1/2 the distance was 1/4 the time.
The ride 2 days ago was 1/2 zone-2 and half zone-3… as the hills and inclines sort of put me at 90% of FTP.
Next week I am back on the stationary bike, so I’ll see how that works out.