Michael Barnett is a well known and liked local triathlete and coach, and has had both lactate tests and help from Blizard’s Jono Frary in the pool with his swimming technique and speed.

He explains here in an extract from his blog (http://smoker2triathlete.blogspot.co.uk) what the cycling lactate threshold test involves:

“I love the fact that, at Blizard Physiotherapy, the people who do the testing have a wealth of knowledge in their field from competing at the top for several years.

My bike was set up on a Cateye Cyclosimulator and a power meter was fitted to my bike. I then warmed up for 10 minutes at a comfortable pace after which I was asked what pace I thought we should start at. I suggested 20mph.

So I pedalled along keeping the speed as close as I could to 20mph. After 3 minutes it was time to give some blood so the lactate content could be measured.

All the while my HR, cadence, RPE and power output data were being collected at regular intervals.

This procedure was repeated at 21mph, 22mph, 23mph, 24mph, 25mph and 26mph with my blood being examined every 3 minutes. I was made to feel at ease and the banter took my mind of the work that I was putting in.

After the interval at 26mph all the required data had been collected and this portion of the test was completed.

Now for the really hard part of the test. What is my body capable of?

This part of the test involved 1 minutes intervals with the speed increasing by 1mph after each minute.

Again, my HR, cadence, RPE and power output were recorded at each one minute interval.

I'm not going to lie and pretend that this part of the test was fun because it wasn’t, but I cycled for one minute intervals at 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30mph and then stopped. My maximum average power output for one interval was 307 watts.

After I stopped I was broken, sweating from head to foot with a severe case of jelly legs but after 4-5 minutes of easy spinning I was back to normal. I went to shower while my results were put into a report.

The resulting report gave me 7 levels for HR on the bike, and I will be using these HR zones in my bike training from now on. I was also given a sample two week plan which I can combine with the rest of my training plan.

The surprising thing about the test was how close my threshold power output of 211 watts was to the theoretical threshold power output of 205 watts. As long as I kept my power output below 211 watts I could keep that output up for an hour which is equivalent to an Olympic distance triathlon.”

The most exciting thing about Michael’s test is the belief it gave him in his own abilities, having had a very personal, one-to-one two hour appointment at the clinic, and taking away data to work on that was completely unique to his current fitness. This is the belief we can instil in everyone who visits us for a cycling lactate threshold test - be the best that you can be!