1.Want to talk about the importance of testing in today's episode, but…

I want to talk about the importance of testing in today's episode, but before I do, let's roll the introduction. The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our longevity? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch, and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Welcome back, roadman. I hope everybody had an enjoyable fun weekend and you got plenty of miles in the legs. Before I dive into the podcast, I'd ask you all to kindly own visit patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That's the place you can go and buy me a coffee and say, you know what, lad, there you go. Have yourself an help, broo, for the good vibes you're bringing me on a Monday. That was everyone's weekends. Hopefully enjoyed it, hopefully you got some long rides in. I decided to kick off the week today with some testing and yeah, testing is difficult, it's challenging at times and I know it can be daunting. So I wanted to talk to you about like why we should test the different types of tests indoor versus outdoor and then if you hang on till the end I'm going to give you more results. I'm just going to bear all and show them to you because you know what they say you should never trust the skinny chef. I also think you should never trust the cycling coach who won't give you his results. So what's the point in testing you might be asking yourself if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't tested in a while, maybe you're experienced right or you just go I know my zone so I don't need to know them or maybe you're someone who just hasn't tested it all because you think it's for someone above your level. So testing is actually, it's the way to get the most productivity out of your training. It's the way to get the most bang for your buck from training. So if you're tight on time, it's absolutely essential that you test regularly because this is going to determine our training zones. Our training zones is the heart of our effect of training strategy and training system. If you're training slightly too hard or slightly too easy, there's a better way you could do it. You could be fitter in the same amount of time. So that's why we need to test. Now the age-old question of indoors versus outdoors testing. Like I have a massive voice towards testing outdoors. I don't think this whole erasing phenomenon is whiffed. As great a tool as it is, at some point we need to reconcile ourselves to the fact that cycling is a pretty primal, almost medieval sport where we need to get outside, we need to feel the potholes, we need to feel the wind that are here, we need to suffer outside. So that's why I'm always going to have that bias towards get outside and ride because I think it's different. Like you can't crash a what bike you can crash outside. There's a boy candle mixed into it. But for the purpose of this, I'm going to run through and talk to you about how you could test indoors because a lot of people will argue that it's a more controlled environment. And if you don't live near a hill, maybe training or testing indoors is a more avoidable alternative for you. So the new platforms like Zwift, trying to road, they'll bring you through, hold your hand step step by step through a protocol and there's two kind of different predominating protocols to the moment. It's the two by eight minute protocol or the one by 20 minutes straight out. And honestly, I was debating this on the club's been at the weekend with a guy who's just getting into cycling. He could be quite a promising writer, but he's just starting off transitioning from running and he was asking and he was thinking of doing the two by 20 minute, two by eight minute tests. Sorry, two by 20. That'd be a rough test.

2.That's what we should be doing

That's what we should be doing. put your hairs on your chest, stay hard, Dave Goggins style, two by eight. And I honestly think it's the type of rider you are determined what protocol you could go with. If you're a criterium style rider, if you're a cyclocross rider, or maybe you're like a pursuit or a Madison guy or something like that, short punchy rider, I think the two by eight is fine. But honestly, I think it's a little bit of a cup out if you're targeting road events to be gone the 2x8, get out and do the 1x20 minutes. Go through this with protocol, go through trying to rob protocol, but choose the 1x20 minute test. As I say, I always have that voice for getting outside of a hill close enough to my house, far so the city, sort of the gateway into the mountains, stocking lane, it's called any Irish listeners will know well past the the Hellfire Club where the Devil plays poker. Urban Legend, who knows. And that's a perfect 20 minute test for me and I like to get out there, warm up right across the city and then it's full gas on the hill. Today I played around with a slightly different protocol which I'm going to talk to you about at the end, but first the pacing of your test because whether you've decided to do it indoors for the 20 minutes or outdoors on the hill for 20 minutes, pacing is key. I think you need to divide it up into quarters, four quarters, five minute sections, you're 20 minute test and each section is trying to build upon the previous section. So if you have a target of like 300 watts for your test, I'd be starting slightly below 300 watts, like maybe 290-ish for your force five minutes, 295 for your next five and then building and then opening it out for the last. This is born from experience. If you go too early and you blow, it is shit. I haven't said that, it's a finite balance because someone wants to ask me, how do you know you've gone hard enough in the threshold test? This is the key, write it down. Go till you see God. It's gotta be hard because that's what it is. It defines all our training going forward so you can't win better on this one. Go till you see God on this test. Okay, so I'm going to talk to you about the protocol I done today and then I'm going to give you the results. So I was trying the new testing protocol, so none of the stuff we talked about there. I don't advise you to go and do it. I'm only testing it out for myself the first time. It's one by 20 seconds, one by 3 minutes, one by 6 minutes, one by 10 minutes. All indoors, all has to be seated. So both those things I feel are, you know, if you're not used to being fully seated, It's gonna reduce your power. If you're not, I'm making excuses to myself here. I'm just gonna go ahead and give it numbers. 20 seconds, I average 890 watts. Three minutes, I average 477 watts. Six minutes, I average 433 watts, and 10 minutes, I average 405 watts. Am I happy with these numbers? You know what? I try to get away from the morality of testing. Am I happy or sad or tribute and go to bad to them? It's a reflection of where I'm at at the moment. Could I be doing more training and absolutely? Are they, is it the best test I've ever done? No, it's a long way from the best test I've ever done. But I have to realize I'm coming back into the sport after a break. So yeah, I'm happy with where I'm at on the journey back. If you are planning on testing soon, I would advise you to take a few easy days before the test because there's nothing worse than going into the test with fatigued legs. That's really gonna tell, especially in the second half of the test. You need to be testing folks.

3.If you're listening to this and you're not testing and you're just…

If you're listening to this and you're not testing and you're just moving towards your target event, people always get into their target event and they're like, oh, I don't know. I just underperformed. I don't know what happened. Like failure doesn't show up by accident. It leaves little clues along the way. And if we were testing, we would have known we weren't on course for the performance we taught. And we could have tweaked it. Now, in an even better way, if you have a coach, he's constantly able to review data because we're building data every single day in this macro picture. and we can adjust the ship. Think about a ship, say, on across the Atlantic. If you just tweak the bell or ship a small bit, a couple of degrees as we go, the destination is completely different, and that's what coaches try and do. They're constantly making that little tweak, so the destination you end up in as an athlete at the very end is completely different. But I would say if you're a self-coached athlete and you're trying to do it out yourself, you know, you can't afford coaching or you haven't taken the plunge yet, and you're not gonna have the skills to interpret the big data and macro sets, so it's imperative that you test. I'd be saying test at the end of every block, so I'd be saying like every six to eight weeks, you should be retesting to make sure you're on course. Okay guys, I've got a ginormous announcement. I'm not on camera, but I'm stretching and I'm showing my hands just how big this announcement is, but it's completely lost to you. It was on a podcast, so I'm gonna stop the on it right now. I worked myself to the bone-out weekend when you were out enjoying the sunshine. What I was doing was I was going through every note I've ever talked, every website I've ever visited, every piece of kit I've ever used and I was pulling together my recommendations. I've put them all into a directory and calling it Roadman resources and I've bought the URL. So if you go to www.roadmanresources.com, what I've done is I've put together a directory of every single piece of kit I use. Now this directory it's in response to literally I take hundreds of DMs and emails and text messages I get pre-moaned about what supplements should I take during the season. What horror should I use from the owner criteria? What hell much should I use from the owner time trial? I was just getting, I love helping people, but I can't respond to all these messages and then it pains me when someone gets the wrong where I'm like, oh I used that and it's shit. Why did he buy that? I should have taken the time to write back, but it's just not always possible. So I didn't wanna let you guys down. So I put together this roadmanresources.com page and it's just, it's gonna be a library. It's gonna be a catalog of everything I recommend from shoes to kids to helmets. It's completely brand neutral. So it's not like it's brought to you by giant and I'm just shilling a load of giant stuff. There's zero helmets, there's Oakley shades, bond shoes, it's your guide. It's the success, it's the resources guide that I wish I had when I was getting started now. So I'm gonna keep growing it every week, every month I find something useful like I just added the in-paradot. It's this cool recovery thing, I got one the month ago and it's epic, I'm just using it every day. So I threw a paradot into it. Now I got a bunch of other muscle stimulators things in the last six months. They're all shit, I didn't add them in. So So you're getting the benefit of my trial and error. It's all in that list. I just need to stop talking and you just need to go check it out, realmmanresources.com. Folks, that's it. It's good to be back this Monday. We're back again tomorrow and thanks for listening to Roman Podcast.