EZ riding

As noted previously decided to use Lifecycle for a bit of VO2 work until lighter evenings arrive.

Being an exercise bike the Lifecycle comes with a number of programs that help lend variety to training and take some of the hassle out of the process. One of the ones I use quite a bit is the "EZ" drill. This apparently stands for "easy" in American though in fact in can be far from this. Basically its a ramp up from a base to beak 75% into the work time, then back to base again. At the highest level 20 setting the peak is 400W which would make this drill harder than my last MAP test (because unlike the MAP when you hit peak you have to keep going..)

Did not feel quite like going for 20 last night but did set target of a warmup EZ12 for 12 minutes then 4 EZs of 20 minutes each going from level 16 (300W peak),17-320W, 18-345W and finally 19-375W. I was not sure at the start I would make it from the end and the last 2 intervals were tough but I just about made it. Used Powertap to capture HR and transferred watts manually to be able to load into WKO.

Work interval for the 5 EZs ended up at 111TSS/246W over 9o minutes with a peak 5 minutes of 344W which aint bad. In terms of VO2 it was just a toe in the water but ended up with near 12 minutes in VO2 territory which is a start.

Other good thing was how tightly my HR matched power. Nice steady rise as power goes up and rapid recovery as it comes down. No sign of it maxing out even on EZ19, peaking at 176bpm.

Last thing of note was that (as I found in test I posted a while back) the Lifecycle seems to be pretty good at delivering accurate watts. I did not seek to replicate conditions for the MAP but in terms of perceived effort the max work at 375W seemed similar to the test and the HR relationship to power ditto looks comparable.