More lab testing

An early morning drive to Athlone. A couple of kms warm-up on the treadmill and then it was straight into the first test.

My weight had dropped by 1.6kgs compared to my previous visit (no Dad around so less Guinness consumption). Feeling a lot better generally I was looking forward to putting in an improved performance. The first part was a 6.5 minute run at my tempo run pace which had been calculated at 17.6km/hour. This test was devised to monitor your Vo2 slow component - don't ask me to explain what that is in any detail. Anyway, this run was relatively easy and after my heart rate had quickly climbed to around 140 after a minute or so, once I had settled into the run it never climbed above 148 for the remainder of the effort. This again shows I have a good running economy and would be more suited to the longer stuff.

After a 10 minute break it was time for the lung-buster. The test was to run no more than 4 minutes and the pace was to be around 1,500m pace. That's a difficult one for me as I've only dabbled in the distance on rare occasions - but it was decided that 21.5kms/hour (2:47/km pace) should see me max out before the 4 minutes was up. The start of the test is tricky as to jump on the treadmill at that pace is somewhat tricky, but once I was going I felt good. Through the first minute and I still felt in control and you had to commit to a further 30 seconds after each segment. I got to 2 minutes and still felt okay, then 2:30 and 3 minutes. By this stage I thought I'd last the full 4 minutes but then in the space of a few seconds I was in the hurt locker. At 3:30 I had to pull the pin...

The good news is that I hit my Vo2 max - this time calculated at over 64 (I'd say most of this improvement was due to my drop in weight which is part of the calculation). My heart rate maxed out at 168 which wasn't quite as high as the last visit.

A good chat after the test about what all the data means in terms of training. I'll go into a lot more detail about this when I get the full results but the good news is that at my current lactate threshold level, I'm at about 85% of my Vo2 max. So with some smarter training, if I can improve my lactate threshold, I still have significant room for improvement. The target would be to get that ratio up to nearer 90% (with some elite runners close to the 95% level).

All up around 8.2kms with warm-up and down. Not a huge distance but that last test really knocked me. A big thank you for having the opportunity to be part of this study which I really enjoyed and I'm looking forward to putting the results data to good use in the coming months by adding more science to my training.