I've been meaning to take the Chris Carmichael's Field Test for a few weeks now and today's a perfect day for it: real crappy out ;-)
It provides a snapshot of your current fitness and a gauge to your progress. Here is a link to the website:
http://www.mastertheshift.com/masters/carmichael/videos/index.asp?videoID=cc3
This link is about the field test but I'd recommend watching the three videos before this to get a better understanding. All together, the other videos are less than 2 minutes.
The test took me about 50 minutes. I cut the last recovery lap on the garmin at 10 minutes because my heart rate wasn't falling anymore. So I walked off the last 5 minutes.
I used my Allez, a trainer, my garmin(all you need are tools to measure cadence, average heart rate and a timer), watched old music videos on vhs on a 21” tv and had a fan on me.
I was surprised to see that my second 8 minute test was better than my first. Now I have the info I need to know my heart rate for different types of bike rides.
Here's a link to my test on garmin. Lap 1 is the warm up, lap 2 and 4 are the tests, laps 3 and 5 are recovery time.