You know the guy who couldn’t pass a calculus exam even if the fate of the human race depended on it, but who can count blackjack cards like one of those brainy MIT kids or Rain Man? Well, I guess don’t really either, but I do know I am not that guy.

After being put through my paces at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine testing lab, I did a similar battery of threshold and power exams outdoors a week later. Much to my chagrin — but not surprise — the outdoor results were very similar to the indoor ones. I remain average.

There was no finger pricking this time. Instead my coach affixed one of his spare PowerTap power meters to my bike, strapped a heart rate monitor around my chest, and then turned me loose on a series of 5-second, 1-minute and 5-minute intervals, before finishing with a single 20-minute effort. The idea behind this second set of tests is that many times athletes produce one result in the lab, but another when rubber meets road.

“In a perfect world we’d like to test riders in the lab every few months,” explained my coach, Boulder Center for Sports Medicine sports science manager Neal Henderson. “But in the real world that doesn’t happen very often, so I need a surrogate set of data that shows the offset for the athlete. That way I can be comfortable in what I prescribe for their training plan.”

For the record, the 5-second pedal-your-butt-off test measured peak power, with my wimpy 928-watt result revealing how much force I could generate in a rested situation.

Next we skipped to the 5-minute effort, a maximum aerobic power barometer. I managed to card a more respectable 338 watts there, which Henderson later pointed to as one of my strengths.

The 1-minute test was a cross between aerobic and anaerobic power. It didn’t go so hot, with just 480 popping up on the screen of the yellow power meter. That was bad news, considering Henderson prefaced the effort by saying, “Most bike races aren’t won on peak power or steady state, but somewhere in between.” This explains my zero-for-life bike-race batting average.

Finally we finished with a 20-minute effort up Flagstaff Mountain, which for the uninitiated, is the measuring stick here in über-athlete’ville -- aka Boulder, Colorado. The winding Flagstaff road juts skyward out of Boulder’s western midsection, offering a steady 4.7-mile ascent that was once the site of the Coors Classic prologue.

Today, Flagstaff is one of Henderson’s prime outdoor testing arenas. He starts riders at the Gregory Canyon turnoff at the base of the climb, and then has them ride to the amphitheater turnoff, 2.8 miles and 1,000 feet higher up.

“Most of the athletes I work with can do that section in the 14-18-minute range,” Henderson says. “An elite will do it in the 13s.”

That’s not an issue I’ll be addressing today. Instead I concentrate on trying to maintain the lactate threshold power output I produced in the lab, about 250 watts. This is Henderson’s way of replicating what he calls the “hour of power.”

“A true test would be a full hour,” he explained. “But since this came at the end of all the other tests, it gives us a fairly good idea of where you are at.”

And just like with the lab tests, it’s a good news-bad news situation.

“Both your 5-minute and 20-minute efforts showed a good ability to sustain at or just above lactate threshold,” explained Henderson, pointing to my 281 watts average on the Flagstaff ascent. “On the other end, your sprint power or anaerobic side definitely needs work. That’s where you can improve performance and that’s one of the areas we’ll be focusing on.”

Before prescribing a steady diet of sprint intervals, Henderson started me out with what he calls a basic base-building plan. Workout programs arrive via a daily email that’s linked to the TrainingPeaks Web site. They look something like this:

Workout #1: Bike, Planned duration: 0:45
Very easy ride, all in the small chainring... unless going downhill with a tailwind. Resist any attempts at harder efforts. Keep HR in the Recovery Zone (Zone 1) for the entire ride. Yes, you should feel embarrassed to be seen riding this slow. It's OK! Stay on flat terrain. Just getting blood flow to the legs!

After I’ve done the work — or recovery in this case — I log on to the site, punch in information such as time and distance, and include a few athlete comments such as, “felt great” or “got dropped on speed bump.” Henderson says it’s that final step that is especially critical in the early going of a coach-pupil relationship.

“When you first start working with a coach, getting an idea of how you communicate with each other is really important,” he explained. “Some guys have all their data uploaded 10 minutes after they ride. Some folks I have to call and say, ‘Hey what’s up? I haven’t heard from you in a while.’ I think that’s what coaching comes down to. It’s not about having a perfect plan. It’s how well you are progressing. You can’t take out the emotional and psychological components.”

That’s not to say Henderson has forsaken technology. TrainingPeaks allows for easy upload of power data, so if you have a measuring device (I don’t) it’s an easy way to convey detailed information about what the body is up to.

“With pro riders, I believe they should be using a power meter,” Henderson said. “This is your job and this is what you should be using to do it. That doesn’t mean you have to be constrained or addicted to it. But it’s one of highest level training tools, and it really measures what is going on out there.”

This is especially true at the pro level, where a power measuring device can get to the heart of what happened inside a race.

“Take the Tour of California,” Henderson said. “If I see that one of the guys I coach stayed with the lead group on a certain climb while holding X watts, but then got dropped when it went up by 10 percent, then I know what the point is where they are going to need to be to make that group next time. Maybe my guy could handle 380 watts for 15 minutes but the climb required 400. That tells us what they have to gain to be in the race next year.”

I’m not on that program yet. Right now I just need to worry about those sprint intervals.

Check back in two weeks for another training update and to see how Sumner faired in his first race of the season, Boulder’s Koppenberg Circuit Race. Now on to this week’s Coach Neal Q&A. If you’d like to ask Henderson a question, please send e-mail to CoachNealQandA@gmail.com. He’ll answer select questions in ensuing columns.

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How much percentage wise can numbers such as lactate threshold and VO2 max be improved?
— Paul Smith, Philadelphia

With elite athletes, I only look for a quarter to half a percent a week increase in lactate threshold power. So a lot of times I only look for measurable differences after about a month of training because that’s where we might see a 1-2-percent gain. That’s also why an elite doesn’t want to drop at all, because it takes so much time to get it back.

Year to year, it really depends on your starting point. The more you’ve done the less you can gain. For someone just starting out you can see significant jumps, but after a while it starts to slow down, and when you get to the elite level it’s really subtle. That said, I’ve seen guys in their 50s who’ve been riding for a long time setting personal records on the track. So it’s not impossible to keep going up.

For VO2 max, it can be anywhere from zero to 10 percent change. Sometimes it’s nothing; the most is probably 3-7 percent within a season. But the next year you’ll be at the same baseline with the same potential peak. You can also see increase if there are body weight changes. Lose weight and your numbers will go up.

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What is altitude’s effect on VO2 max?
— Kelvin Benson, Austin, Texas

Increased altitude drops VO2 max by between 5 and 10 percent. Most medical texts say it’s a 5 percent decrease starting at 5000 feet, and then it drops 2-3 percent every additional 1000 feet you go up. That also means you’ll have a change in power at VO2 max and power at lactate threshold.

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As a 48-year-old expert mountain biker, Cat. 4 road racer and master’s cyclocross racer, I find that many training programs are geared to the person who has many hours to train. For me, family, business and general responsibilities make that difficult. Can fewer training hours, but more intensity and rest work for the working man?
— Joe Burtoni, Durango, Colorado

Absolutely. I have a client that will be 51 this year and she is a four-time NORBA national champion in the 45-plus age group, and she’s won a UCI world title at 49. She works full time and only trains 6-12 hours a week. I believe the minimum is probably 8-10 hours a week to still be going well in events that are 1-2 hours long.

To do this we don’t dramatically increase the intensity. We maintain the distribution where there is still a heavy component of aerobic training, but also maximize recovery between intense workouts. You also need to make sure that the intensity is the best quality possible. So make the easy work as easy as it can be, and the hard as hard as it can be. Most people, if left to their own devises, trend toward the middle, not really hard, not really easy. But if you can hit those two ends of the spectrum, even on very limited training time, you can still get very solid results.

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I was hit by a car in late October 2007 and broke my left hip. I was off my feet for about 3 1/2 months, and have just now started back on the trainer. I used to take care of all my own training plans, but now I feel truly overwhelmed by the thought. Do you have any suggestions for finding a coach?
— Sean Moran, Chicago

When looking for a coach you should first consider their knowledge and background. In your case, you probably want someone who has previous experience in a medical area; someone who is a cycling coach and also a physical therapist or MD. The No. 2 thing to figure out what kind of coaching they do. You don’t want someone who specializes in mountain bike racing if you are a track rider. After that, the key is finding someone you feel you can work with, so make sure to ask lots of questions before making a final decision.

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How much do lab tests like those Jason underwent go for? If it’s incredibly expensive, is there a more reasonable option that’s not as broad?
— Michael L. Pastore, Vail, Colorado

The cost of the tests Jason did in the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine lab, which included lactate threshold, FUEL and VO2 Max, is $275. The Wingate test is an additional $65. If you were to only do lactate threshold, it’s $150 and I would still go over the results with you and provide target training zones, heart rate and power. That by itself is enough to move forward and gives you the most important information. Even some of the world champions I’ve coached only do lactate, because that’s the one to do if you are only going to do one.

Editor’s note: Jason Sumner is a freelance writer and Cat. 4 bike racer who is working with a cycling coach for the first time in his life. Sumner’s 2008 goals include improving on his usual mid-pack finishes, not getting dropped on weekend group rides, and learning something along the way. He’ll be documenting his experiences for VeloNews.com in this twice-monthly column.)

Neal Henderson (http://www.bch.org/sportsmedicine/science.cfm/Staff%20Biographies) is sports science manager at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine and a well-regarded elite-level coach. Henderson’s clients include Slipstream-Chipotle’s Taylor Phinney, Jelly Belly’s Scott Tietzel and Trish Downing, a nationally ranked paraplegic athlete. Henderson is also the winter triathlon coach for the U.S. national triathlon team. His coaching philosophy is based on "integrating science with what is practical and proven because we don’t live in laboratories, and no one ever won a world championship medal for a lab performance.” He is working with Jason Sumner on a pro bono basis. If you’d like to ask Henderson a question, please send e-mail to CoachNealQandA@gmail.com. He’ll answer select questions in ensuing columns.