FitnessCheck Comes to Heathwood Swimming and Triathlon Club in Cardiff

We're opening a new testing location in Cardiff: Heathwood Swimming and Triathlon Club, a dedicated multi-sport facility in the north of the city. Cycling lactate and VO2 testing starts there on 26 August 2026. Swim-specific testing is in the plan and will be announced once dates are confirmed.

Why Heathwood

Heathwood is purpose-built for competitive swimming and triathlon. The facility houses a swim flume, a counter-current pool that lets swimmers hold speed against a calibrated flow, alongside dedicated training areas for cycling and run work. It is not a general gym with a pool bolted on. It is a facility built around multi-sport performance, and the athlete base that trains there reflects that.

The demand for physiological testing at a triathlon club is different from the demand at a road cycling or running facility. Triathletes need threshold data across disciplines. Knowing your run LT2 tells you almost nothing about your cycling LT2, and neither tells you anything useful about your swim economy. A triathlete building a race plan off a single threshold number from a single sport is working with an incomplete picture of their own physiology.

We're starting with cycling at Heathwood because it's the most direct entry point: power-based threshold testing gives clear, actionable pacing numbers for the bike leg, and it pairs naturally with what cyclists and triathletes at the club are already doing. Swim testing will extend the offering to the full triathlon picture.

What cycling testing gives you at Heathwood

The format is the same protocol we run at our other locations. You'll ride a step test on a calibrated trainer to exhaustion while we sample blood lactate at each stage. The result is a lactate-power curve showing your aerobic threshold (LT1), your anaerobic threshold (LT2), and the training zones derived from each.

For a triathlete, the practical outputs are:

Race pacing for the bike leg. If you know your LT2 in watts, you know exactly where to sit on the bike in a standard-distance race, a 70.3, or an Ironman. Not an estimate from an FTP test or a rule-of-thumb percentage, but the actual inflection point in your individual physiology where lactate accumulation becomes unsustainable.

Training zones that cross disciplines cleanly. The zones we derive are set in watts for the bike. The same test visit also gives you the heart rate at each threshold, which means you can cross-reference effort level across cycling, running, and swimming sessions. Where power isn't available, heart rate anchored to a known physiological point is a meaningful proxy.

A benchmark to retest against. A second test 12 to 16 weeks into a structured block shows whether your thresholds have actually shifted. For triathletes training across three disciplines simultaneously, that feedback is harder to get from race performance alone. A number tells you what the block actually did to your aerobic system; a feeling doesn't.

Swim testing: what's coming

Heathwood's flume pool makes it the right place to add swim-specific testing when that offering is ready. A counter-current pool holds you at a fixed speed without requiring lane turns, which means lactate samples can be taken at consistent intensities, something that is simply not possible in an open pool where pace fluctuates between walls.

The intended outcome is the same as cycling or running testing: a lactate-velocity curve that shows your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds in swimming, expressed in pace and stroke rate. For a triathlete, that closes the loop. You would have threshold data for all three legs of the race, from the same testing methodology, at the same location.

We'll announce swim testing dates separately when they're confirmed. In the meantime, the cycling testing launch on 26 August is the place to start.

Booking

Cycling lactate and VO2 testing at Heathwood Cardiff is open for booking from 26 August 2026. Details and available slots are on the Heathwood location page.

If you're a triathlete based in Cardiff and want to test across disciplines, contact us first, and we can advise on which test to start with based on your race calendar and training phase.

For more on what a lactate test report gives you, read What's Actually in a Lactate Threshold Test Report. For context on how cycling threshold data is used in training, read FTP and the Female Cyclist: What the Standard Training Numbers Get Wrong.