whoawhoa said:Well, threshold wattage may not be constan over a variety of terrain due to positions outside of what you normally train in, such as a time trial position for someone who doesn't train like that often, etc.
Second of all, this has to do with your first post: Lt is a workload. It's not a heart rate. Wattage is one way of quantifying that workload. Also, lt as defined in most labs is a much lower intensity than what most athletes think of it as. Therefore, Andy Coggan's training levels system (which can be found in the link Woofer posted) are based on functional threshold (1-hr tt power) which eliminates the need for formal lactate testing.
Thirdly: Power is much more constant than heart rate. If you are riding with a pm, I don't think there's any reason to use a hrm except for long endurance or tempo rides where you may find it easier to keep hr steady rather than power (which can tend to jump around when just riding).
I guess I'm coming from a really basic understanding of training where my HR corresponds to where I am in physically in terms of what type of training I'm doing. I understand that HR is not up to the second accurate but it guides me as follows
Over 174 bpm - above LT therefore not sustainable for very long
155- 174 - Sustainable yet very strong effort
130 -154 - Moderate
129 and below - recovery
So in a given ride once I see 174 + I'm starting to watch myself and hence I was wondering if there's a power number equivalent or if I'm comparing apples to oranges and simply need to learn a new process.
The articles give great insight though and I will be sure to read them more thoroughly later.
