Critical Power Test - September 2021

Yesterday morning, the 27th, I did a critical power test.  I think workout in the Stryd application said it was a critical power calibration but for all purposes it was a critical power test.  The prescription was to warm up for 5 minutes, run hard for 20 minutes, recover for 5 minutes, run extremely hard for 30 seconds and then cool down for 5 minutes.  

In typical fashion I had been thinking about this for two or more days prior to the event. Where was I going to run? Should I include a hill? What if it's really windy?  Is 5 minutes warm up enough?  Should I do this on the treadmill since it will be treadmill time shortly? You get the idea!  

Since this was not scheduled to be as long as I normally run in the mornings I slept in for a few minutes and was out on the road, lit up, at 5:25AM.  The route I ended up choosing was mostly flat but there was some downhill and some uphill.  But they were both very slight in nature!  

After 5 minutes of running I went off and began my hard run.  Looking at online calculator in Stryd it said I should have been able to run about 297 power for 20 minutes.  I was shooting for slightly less than that to start with and get there as time went by.  For about the first minute and a half I kept the power down and after that it was just running hard.  I wasn't sure that I'd be able to hold on but I was able to.  In the ended I ran those 20 minutes at 315 watts and a pace of 8:36 per mile (my previous critical power was 288 from the early part of August).  



My recovery was very nearly shuffling but I also felt like I could have kept up that pace for another few minutes as least.  I may have fallen off of a cliff but I felt like I had a bit more in the tank!

The 30 second extremely hard ended up being 436 watts at a pace of 6:48 per mile!





In the end my critical power went from 288 to 309!  I had a feeling that going into this test that 288 was a bit low.  Nothing scientific about it other than the runs I've been doing with a higher cadence have been hard to keep in my zone 1. Additionally my critical power didn't adjust after my trail race in late August (I think it not adjusting was good given my performance..).  

Part of me thinks this adjustment is to much BUT another part of me is like "Fuck yeah...finally getting some speed in my easy runs".  Only time is going to tell.  I'm still not really following any sort of plan other than running.  I think I mentioned this in my last post but I'm doing one workout a week and the rest is easy run, easy run/strides and finally a long run. I'm trying to get that long run up to 90 minutes but we'll see.  

Lastly Stryd came out with some new updates to their application that I'm excited to try out and see how it all works.  The main one I'm interested in is The Training Plan Builder.  To a lesser extent the Training Plan Analyzer.  Once I've had a chance to look at them I'll post something up here talking about them.  

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