What is the VORTEST?
The rig itself consists of one static bike with powertap connected to a laptop loaded with a programme cunningly designed to measure your output. Dependant on your needs the tests can measure several different significant areas that you want to train. Each programme has its own particular pain inducing speciality. Sprint, threshold and anaerobic ability attack the body in every way possible and with every passing training day the inevitable date with reality moves closer.
Each member of the team knows what to expect we’ve all subjected ourselves to it so that the files can be collated and individual programmes can be designed. Now into my third term of the torture it still fills me with dread, the build up always begins the same, you’ve finished your month of hard work and your recovery days have lulled you into a state of false relaxation. It’s there though, lurking in the background of your mind, the spectre of knowing that for around an hour and a half at the end of the week your tormentor I mean coach will be there, waiting for you to arrive so he can strap you onto the rig to make sure you’ve been a good boy and not told him porkys about what training you’ve done. A little light hearted banter with him to try and settle your nerves is the preamble. It’s akin to the childish, giggling bravado with your mates prior to a teenage date, you know what they expect of you but will your performance meet with approval or will you look at the end result with embarrassment and despair?
The warm up, the final few kilometres of Alpe D’Huez on the I-Magic this time, spinning a low gear and getting the heart rate going has the desired effect, warm enough now for the cooling fan to be required, it’s welcome breeze taking the edge from the perspiration tumbling from the pores. Warm up completed and the first of the tests is set on the screen, sprints.
A full on, no holds barred effort timed to evaluate your ability to push out as many watts as you can for as long as you can. The tone starts you and bang off you go hitting it as hard as possible the first seconds see the readout shoot up and then all to quickly you realise that you aren’t Sir Chris or Cav, it’s January and you’ve lost what ever ability you had to hold at any reasonable wattage for more than a few seconds. Someone appears and is pouring lactate into your thighs from a water jug and there is nothing your body can do to empty them. Your head tell your legs to keep the cadence high, but it’s just not happening then suddenly the tone tells you it’s time to stop and recover. That’s not though as you are now expected to have a short recovery and do it all again, just to make sure that there’s some consistency! The second effort is just as painful but this time the lungs start to burn too and the sting of acid starts to build in the throat as you finish your effort. It’s at that point you’re asked “How did that feel?” Even if you could speak there haven’t yet been words invented to describe “how you feel”.
Recover and on to the next sadistically designed test, threshold, a period of time between three and five minutes where you ride at pursuit tempo to establish your endurance abilities. Once again the tone indicates the beginning of the self inflicted torture. No matter how much you tell yourself to pace it you always start too fast, the wattage of Bradley Wiggins is not the place for mere mortals to be, reality sets in (or more accurately forced upon you) and a more realistic output ensues, it still hurts and you become more aware of your breathing and pedalling action, “keep it smooth and rhythmic” repeats in your head, try not to think of the time passing concentrate on cadence, but there is no escape from nature or physiology. It’s different this time, the pain that is. It’s there don’t get me wrong, the lactic build up isn’t so immediate, it’s more intense and you can feel it building, loading your muscle tissue, weighing it down so that every pedal stroke becomes battle between your brain, your lungs and your legs. It’s as if strong elastic has been attached to your feet to pull them in the opposite direction that you are telling them to go, the resultant compromise being a wattage you can sustain for the whole effort. A white dot appears from somewhere floating about infront of your eyes and as the pain tightens it turns yellow, grows larger and starts flashing closing your eyes doesn't help the psychedelic show just intensifies. Eventually the tone sounds and welcome relief as the programme releases you from its grip, temporarily. No questions, the look last time must have said it all. It isn’t over by any stretch of the imagination the final and most devious test is yet to come. The ramp test awaits.
Simple in design the ramp test is sneaky, it creeps up on you allowing you to believe that you are actually mastering it, of course that just isn’t going to happen. The beauty of this test is no matter how fit you are it will always, always, always beat you. The test starts with all the venom of a Sunday club run actually that’s an exaggeration it’s more like the effort required to sit in a café on the Sunday club run, surely this can’t be part of the test? You sit there as every thirty seconds the programme requires you to up the wattage, it’s almost sedate and you look at the screen thinking I could sit here for hours spinning away, but as the wattage climbs the requirements demanded of you change and you wish you were sitting in that café supping on an expresso and chewing down on some calorie laden sugary delight. As you move inexorably through discomfort to effort to pain your heart rate lifts, slowly at first but it’s having to work now, you breathe harder the earlier tests have chipped away at the energy reserves and once again the lactate beast decides its feeding time. The wattage demands are relentless creeping up ten at a time as your heart has to work harder to get those red blood cells moving towards your lungs for oxygen. Your head sees the steps on the ramp, just ten watts more you tell yourself, again and again, break it into little chunks it can’t be that bad surely? But it is, you can’t escape it, mouth gasping, lung crushing, it feels as though you are sucking searing hot dry air that is not compatible with your lungs and in less than a minute your body says enough the watts just can’t be sustained any more as your anaerobic frailty is exposed to the world. Finally it’s over and as the programme is switched off you try to warm down and pedal with legs that feel as though your femurs have been surgically removed.
It really doesn’t get any worse than that, pure unadulterated torture, forget water boarding if you want a confession threaten them with a VORTEST.
The really crazy thing though is that we do this so that once the analysis is done and the “needing work” areas are identified, the training schedule is adapted to strengthen the bits that hurt the most and next month we’ll see if it worked………
