The Test Does Not Define You

By Mayito | Utmost Performance

I want to talk about testing, and I'll start with a five-minute test I did this morning that did not go the way I planned.

The Setup

I had been preparing for a power duration test, and everything was pointing in the right direction. The intervals had been going great. The workouts leading in had been solid. On paper, I was set up to at least match my five-minute best, if not beat it.

So I hopped on the bike, did a couple of warm-up efforts, and started the test.

Just after two minutes in, I knew it wasn't going to happen.

The power had been good up to that point, but I was struggling more at the two-minute and two-and-a-half-minute mark than I normally would. I've taken enough of these tests to know the difference.

How a Five-Minute Test Is Supposed to Feel

A five-minute test is going to get ugly at some point. That's just how it works. You end up pedaling with any body part you can find, and you have to resist the urge to quit.

But on a good day, with the legs good and the body responding, the ugly doesn't show up until about three minutes and thirty or forty-five seconds. If you're really lucky, it's closer to the four-minute mark. That's when the gorilla jumps on your back, it's all hands on deck, and you have to sell it just to get to the end. Then you come out with a good number.

This morning, the gorilla showed up at two minutes. That's a very long time to fight through something like that, and I was already bleeding power.

Mental Hurdle One: Keep Going or Stop?

Around the three-minute mark, I had a decision to make.

I could hit the lap button right then and call it a day. Those first three minutes were going to look really good. In hindsight, they were: right there with my best three-minute power. But I knew I couldn't hold it, and I knew that if I kept going, the five-minute number would not be a best. It would be below that, and who knows by how much.

So the question was a real one. If I continue, what am I doing it for? I already know it won't be a best performance.

I kept going, because that's where the room for growth is.

Those last two minutes were really bad. If I showed you the power file, you'd see it coming down and down, and by the end I was barely above threshold. But I finished, and it's a five minutes I'm proud of, because I gave everything I had.

Here's how I put it to someone earlier today: if you took a photo or a video of me at the end of this morning's test, and another one from the day I rode my five-minute best, you couldn't tell the difference. You wouldn't know which day was which without looking at the data. I'm proud of that.

At some point the question changed from what is this test going to give me? to what am I going to give it? I knew this wasn't my best, but that was no longer the point. The point was to give my best in terms of effort, not in terms of power.

Mental Hurdle Two: The Data

Then I got off the bike and lay over the top tube, and that chapter was done. Good job, Mario.

But right behind it came the second challenge, and it's one we all know. Now we want to go look at the data.

Where did things start coming undone? What did the power drop to? Did I fight? How does it compare to the best effort? Could I really have done better? Was I not tough enough?

Suddenly everything is about questions and analysis, and that gets dangerous. Do I keep hammering at it at home? Do I keep asking questions and dissecting it? That road can do real harm mentally. The effort was there. The legs weren't, and the power wasn't. So what do I do with that?

That's what led me to the three things I want to say about testing. Whether you're self-coached or working with a coach, you're going to test at some point. You need to know if the training is working, if things are moving in the right direction, and where your benchmarks are. Testing is necessary and it matters. But here's how I think about it.

The Test Does Not Define You

This is the most important one. A test doesn't define who you are, and a lot of the time it doesn't even tell you where you really are.

That was especially true for me this morning. I had to create some mental clarity and ask myself: you've been doing double VO2 max sessions every week, and they've been going really, really well. Did you forget all of those sessions because of this one test that didn't go the way you wanted?

Be careful about making a broad generalization from one performance. If your training leading into it has been going well, one bad test probably doesn't mean much.

Remember, training is all about predictions. We do certain things and predict what will happen. With human performance, those predictions can be wrong, and often are. Keep that in mind.

Timing Matters

What if I had done this test yesterday? What if I had waited until tomorrow? I've been doing this a long time, and I can tell you the outcome could absolutely have been different.

The training plan lays out a test on a certain day, but that doesn't mean it's the best day to do that test. Sometimes you land on a test day and the stars align. Other times everything points to this should be the day, and it isn't.

Human performance ebbs and flows a lot, and we have to be okay with that.

Be Careful How You Approach It

This one ties in with the first two. When we see a test on a training plan, we give it extra weight. That's a big day. That's the day my coach finds out whether I'm any good, or whether the training is working. If it goes well, everything is great. If it doesn't, the ship is taking on water, and I wonder if I'll be ready for my goal event.

We make tests out to be something they aren't.

I'd encourage you to be open-minded and open-handed on test day. Let's just see what happens. Give yourself some space and some freedom. Warm up, do the opening efforts, and don't let the stress and anxiety get too high.

A little more anxiety than a normal day is okay. There's going to be some on race day, too, and that's fine. What we want to avoid is the unhealthy version: obsessing over it the night before, replaying it over and over, then climbing on the trainer and reading into every pedal stroke of the warm-up, already assigning a result before the test has even started.

When we make a test more important than it is, emotionally and mentally, it takes over, and it shows up in the data: in the power, the heart rate, and the RPE. RPE is a good example. In a five-minute test, RPE is already going to be very high for the last stretch, and you have to push through it. If you've loaded the test with extra stress and anxiety, you may have maxed out that perceived effort artificially before you even started.

Press Into It

Testing is necessary, and it's important. But be careful how you frame it and what you decide it means on the other side.

Have fun with it. Be excited about it. Look forward to it rather than fearing it. Let it teach you something, even if, like me this morning, you blow up halfway through a five-minute test. Keep going and take something valuable from it.

To be honest, if the test had gone really well, I wouldn't have gotten the experience I got today. I wouldn't have been on the other side of it, working out how to get to the finish line when things fell apart halfway. That's worth something too.

‍