I’m currently volunteering for Emma Zadow at UTAS as one of her cycling ‘guinea pigs’ (subjects) into the possible affect the time of day has on your training. Emma has already done a couple of studies on cyclists and just back from overseas presenting the results of one study at an international conference. Quite interesting training as you have your VO2 MAX measured and your lactate levels tested pre and post efforts. All useful training data to have and see where you are at. All the data is supplied to you at the end of the trial. You are connected to some interesting equipment in there lab.

Time of day guinea pig

A few weeks ago I did my VO2 MAX test that basically tests how much oxygen your body can process per minute giving you a measure of aerobic fitness. Based on these figures a specific 10 minute warm up is set at specific power levels based on your test. Lots of questionnaires at each stage of the process to fill out while resting.

The main part of the test is to do a 4KM time trail as fast as you can at each session. These are very difficult efforts and all feedback is removed except the distance to go making pacing very difficult. I found it very difficult anyway without heart rate. There lab is a large air conditioned box with a few computers and a large fan to cool the riders as they max out for a few minutes on their power trainer.

Friday was just a familiarisation effort with the actual real test sessions starting Monday. There are 5 sessions spread out from 8:30AM to 8:30PM over a couple of weeks so there is recovery time between them. I’ll keep you posted how I go.