Cadence Multisport and Fitness Center generously offered to show us how they use V02 max testing in conjunction with lactate threshold testing to get a clear picture of a cyclist’s training zones and fitness potential. It was a chance for them to show off their expertise as well as their shiny new hardware.

We tagged along with Colette Levy, a new cyclist but an accomplished athlete – can you tell? She estimates that she has only been on her new black Cervelo Soloist ‘about ten times’, and we were confident she would make for an interesting test subject.

It’s easy to get lost at Cadence. At 11,000 square feet, the Tribeca ‘campus’ is massive. I followed Colette past racks of gorgeous Cervelo bikes, past the café and the huge Computrainer room, to what looks like a doctor’s office furnished with computers, a treadmill, yet another Computrainer, and a Parvo TrueOne 2400 for V02 max testing. We were told this is the same machine that NASA uses to test astronauts, and that the only other one in the city is in a hospital. The machine looks pretty impressive, and it’s not even tuned on yet.

Coach Mikael Hanson will be administering the test. A pro-am racer in college until a nasty crash sidelined his career, Coach Mikael worked on Wall Street for fourteen years and then decided he’d had enough; he wanted to work for himself doing something he loved. He began coaching out of his home and competing in biathlons, triathlons, and cross-country skiing, and he looks ready to race even sitting behind all of these machines. After a few years of working at home had become too tedious, he jumped at the chance to be a part of Cadence’s Tribeca facility.

Before the test began we noticed that Colette, who has never had a proper bike fit, looked like she was sitting a bit low on her Soloist. When I commented upon it, Mikael quickly produced a tool to measure the angle of her knee. Sure enough it was bent at 142 degrees, well below what Mikael told us was the range for even a triathlete, who usually have a 148-150 degree angle, let alone a roadie, who have an angle of 150-154 degrees. He raised the seat until her knee was at 148 degrees, not wanting to make the change too abrupt, and set her seat back a bit, too not a full fitting by any means but helpful nevertheless.

The protocol Cadence uses to determine a rider’s lactate threshold is a pretty standard Conconi-type test. The rider warms up on a Computrainer, and after an initial interval of 4 minutes the machine’s resistance increases twenty watts every three minutes. Between each interval a tiny prick of blood is drawn from the cyclist’s finger and it is then measured for lactate on the LactatePro analyzer. When the rider’s blood lactate reaches 4mml/L, the power level is noted, and the lactate threshold is determined. All the data gathered becomes a window into the athlete’s current level of fitness and will assist the coach in determining the athlete’s heart rate and corresponding power zones, as well as the athlete’s most productive training zones.

Colette was a bit nervous – unlike most beginners she actually has a lot of experience with these sorts of tests. It turns out she was an 800-meter runner with the French Olympic team. But she hasn’t really done much after she stopped running twelve years ago, except maybe a bit of Salsa dancing. She started exercising again recently and some friends introduced her to cycling, which has quickly become a passion.

Beginning at 90 watts, Colette completes the first couple of intervals with a blood lactate level of 1.1, about the same it would be if she were sitting on the couch. I ask Mikael to predict how many watts she will have at 4mmls, and he says 170. I thought maybe higher as she was spinning so effortlessly, but sure enough, at the 190 watts interval she was way over. Mikael has hit it on the nose, although Colette clearly still has plenty in the tank. Mikael lets her do two more intervals just to keep recording the hockey stick pattern of her results. After an athlete’s blood lactate goes above 4mmls the body is no longer able to ‘cycle’ the lactate efficiently, so not only does lactate production increase but the excess isn’t cleared. The resultant ‘heavy legs’ sensation are actually not a direct result of blood lactate, a popular misconception, but due to an increase in hydrogen ion concentration (a condition referred to as acidosis) inside the muscle cell. This seems to happen at the same time as the onset of higher blood lactate levels but it hasn’t been determined to be the actual limiting factor in and of itself. (We’ll save that discussion for another article.)

To get a basic understanding of lactate clearance in your body, picture a plastic cup with a pinhole in the bottom. Now start pouring water from a pitcher above. As you increase the amount of water being poured, the cup fills to the rim. That is like your lactate threshold: the point where you are pouring as much water as you can into the cup with it only escaping from the pin hole, not over the sides. Once the water starts spilling over the sides you have gone over the threshold. At this point, your body only has a couple of minutes where you are able to produce the same effort, hence the terms ‘super’ or ‘above threshold’. To be able to pour in more sustained power you will need a bigger cup.

In between tests Mikael lets Colette spin for about ten minutes. I took the opportunity to ask her where she came from. As it turned out, this was an unexpectedly difficult question to answer. She was born in Paris, and moved first to Madrid and then London as a child. Although she speaks English without a trace of an accent, she only first moved to the U.S. to go to school: Brown as an undergrad and then Wharton to get a Master’s. She then moved back to France to run on the Olympic team.

Following this interlude of cultural biography, Mikael straps on a scary mask for Colette to breathe into, and fires up some fancy software to chart the progress of the next test. VO2 max is the maximum volume (V) of oxygen (O2) in milliliters that you can use in one minute, per kilogram of body weight. Oxygen consumption happens to be linearly related to energy expenditure: when oxygen consumption is measured, we are directly measuring an individual’s maximal capacity to work aerobically. Mikael tells me to pay close attention to the number under the initials ‘R.E.R.’

Later, Chad Butts, head coach and resident exercise physiologist – not to mention super-fast Cat 1 cyclist – explains to me that R.E.R. stands for ‘Respiratory Exchange Ratio’, the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen. From this ratio a coach can determine when the body switches from efficient fat burning to faster but far less efficient carbohydrates for fuel. In a way, the R.E.R. at 1 in the V02 max test is like the 4mmls in the lactate threshold test. Except that in this case when the number reaches one we can determine what kind of potential an athlete has for a long effort.

A person’s V02 max is for the most part genetically determined, and if you are in reasonably good shape then it is quite difficult to improve the number very much. Maybe 5 points, Chad says. So in and of itself it’s not all that interesting. You don’t need a number to tell you that you’ll never run a sub four-minute mile or smoke Levi up Alpe d’Huez. But after completing both the lactate threshold and the VO2 max tests a coach can compare results of the two to get an even clearer picture of an athlete’s fitness and how much he or she may improve. For example, if a highly trained professional athlete can sustain 500 watts at their V02 Max, and their lactate threshold is 460 watts, they are at 90% efficiency and are not going to improve much. Chad tells that me the most a person could conceivable go is about 95 percent, and even eight-five percent is extremely well trained.

On this test Colette gets to give it everything shes got, and impressively she runs the machine up to 55 – her VO2 max is well above the average of 34 for her age. At 55 she is produciing 250 watts, her watts at VO2 Max. Obviously she is already in great shape: as a runner she tested at a 63 V02 max, not surprising since a running test will give you a 5-6 point boost.

Perhaps even more interesting is her R.E.R. number: when it was at an even 1 she was producing 210 watts, well above her lactate threshold of 170. In a well trained cyclist this number would be even, or in some cases the RER of 1 would be even higher than the lactate threshold, but Colette’s test reflects her situation predictably.

If someone had just showed me this test I would have said it was taken by a very fit athlete who was new to cycling. As she continues to progress as a cyclist her muscles will adapt, her pedaling will become more efficient and then her LT will come to be about the same as here RER, Mikael told us. So the good new is, as strong as she is, she has a lot of room for improvement. Her power at lactate threshold is only 68% of her power at VO2 max (170 divided by 250).

Mikael slips all of Colette’s results into a neat Cadence folder and meets with her in the Cadence café (not to be confused with the ‘lifestyle center’) to go over the results again. They pass on the paninis and cappuccino, although both are readily available. It’s almost surprising that the bill doesn’t arrive on a silver tray, but what is undeniably remarkable is that the two tests and the consultation come to the low price of just $300 dollars, about what you’d spend for a night at the W Hotel or a glass of Chateau Petrus.

Women’s VO2 max

Men’s VO2 max

Athletes

• US College Track, Male: 57.4
• College Students, Male: 44.6
• Steve Prefontaine, US runner, 84.4
• Frank Shorter, US Olympic Marathon winner, 71.3
• Derek Clayton, Australian ex-Marathon World Record holder, 69.7
• Jeff Galloway, US Runner, 73.0
• Greg LeMond, cyclist, 92.5
• Matt Carpenter, Pikes Peak marathon course record holder, 92
• Miguel Indurain, cyclist, 88

Thanks to Niko T and Robert Grover for their help with this article!
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