Fitness is a basic measure of how well trained an athlete is. All other things equal, we’d assume that an athlete will perform better after going through more rigorous training; that training would help them build more fitness.
Cycling for years measured fitness with feel, logging miles and duration of training on the bike, but the advent of electronic technology on bicycles has diversified the way that fitness can be measured. Heart rate monitors, power meters, and training software are commonly used to track fitness, and each has a slightly different metric.
Volume, measured either by the number of miles ridden or time in the saddle, is a great place to start when getting an idea of fitness. The disadvantage of fitness by mileage is that the intensity of the ride is not at all accounted for; a mile on a recovery ride is the same as a mile of a race. The intensity of those two scenarios is different, and if one were to train at race intensity all the time, you’d build fitness much faster (probably too fast to sustain), while if you only recovery ride you’ll hard build fitness at all.
Heart rate is a good method for tracking exercise intensity. The intensity of the exercise is inferred based on heart rate; they typically are positively correlated. Training software can take a recording of heart rate, place it in heart rate zones for a given athlete, and generate a fitness score. Tracking that score over a long period of time can give a good idea of fitness. Heart rate measurements are cheap to track, and a perfect way to start tracking fitness. Unfortunately, Heart Rate doesn’t provide a perfect picture either. Heart rate is affected by things other than exercise intensity. Temperature extremes, diet, and stimulants are all prone to increasing heart rate, reporting that a given training session was more intense than in fact.
More recently, most cyclists rely on power meters to track fitness. Power meters measure the amount of physical work that you do on the bike, and by tracking that work over time, it gauges intensity very accurately. There are multiple power meters available today, from very basic single arm units to highly accurate pedal and crank spindle units. Precision is more important than accuracy for most riders; it doesn’t matter if the actual number is a little off, so long as it’s always off the same amount, at least for tracking fitness.
Fitness is a useful concept for understanding how your body is doing with recent training, with planning training for that day, and can specifically help you with planning good performances on race day.
Discover more from ABC Endurance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
