Test me

10:10 AM - 6 miles, 45:00 - Tufts.
40 minutes on the SNOW-covered grass, last 5 minutes on the roads to get my legs back under me. Starting to feel pretty good again.

In a few hours I'll be heading over to Blackstone Valley Human Performance in Grafton where I will be thrown on a treadmill and hooked up to a bunch of tubes in order to test my aerobic capacity, otherwise known as a Vo2 max test. I've never had anything like this done before, so I'm curious to see what the test reveals. From what I understand the higher your Vo2 max, the greater your potential for endurance-related performance.

I did a little research and came up with the following readings for a handful of successful endurance athletes.

Siberian sled dog: 240 ml/kg/min
Thoroughbred race horse: 180
Bjørn Dæhlie: 96
Greg LeMond: 92.5
Lance Armstrong: 85
Steve Prefontaine: 84.4
Grete Waitz: 73
Frank Shorter: 71
Derek Clayton: 69

The facility record at BVHP is listed on the website as 63.7 ml/min/kg. I have no idea what that means, or if I'll even have any control over doing so, but I'm going to try and break that record tonight. Yes, everything with me is indeed just one big competition.

As part of the testing package, one I was able to secure through a working relationship between BVHP and the store, I'll also be getting my body composition analyzed, which I'm guessing will reveal the ratio of skin to bones that makes up my ectomorphic frame. While I'm there, I'm going to try and cover all my bases and see if I can get my lactate threshold measured as well, even if it costs me an extra 110 bucks. I'm generally not one to get overly geeky about the scientific stuff, but if I'm going to get tested I figure I might as well run the gauntlet.

Stay tuned, I'll post the results here as soon as time allows.

Quote of the Day

"It was just flat out in the last mile-and-a-half almost. That last 50 meters I almost fell over my legs were so heavy.”
- Josh McDougal, 2007 NCAA cross country champion