Today Marc and I headed to The Sport Factory where Matt hurt us. I mean, he tested our VO2Maxs.
The results really surprised me. I weigh about ten pounds more than I did when I got tested three months ago. That's a decent handicap in terms of VO2Max which includes a body weight component. On top of that my consistency has been fairly poor. While I've fulfilled 30 min/day, many of those days were weak efforts. I expected my number to drop and was really more interested in my AeT and AT.
But my numbers rose on both the run and on the bike. So my new motto in life is "expect less, get more." I plan on working out less than 12 minutes per day from here on out.
Run VO2Max: 68.6 ml O2/kg/min Bike VO2Max: 63.3 ml O2/kg/min
These are clearly the result of more anaerobic and interval work. When I've actually made it to workouts, I've gone hard so far this year. Let's not talk about when I haven't made it.
If you're not into the numbers this is a good time to check out.
Run: AeT dropped from 40.6@165bpm to 41.9@163bpm AT rose from 52.9@180bpm to 61.9@186bpm Peak rose from 60.9@193bpm to 68.6@196bpm
Again, these numbers demonstrate that I've lost some overall aerobic fitness but gained in my anaerobic zones. I can go faster over shorter distances. Over the season my hope is to retain some of that speed while re-building the aerobic side of things. Matt talked to me a good bit about maintenance work on the endurance I still do have.
Bike: AeT rose from 41.9@159bpm to 43.6@172bpm AT dropped slightly from 54.9@179bpm to 54@182bpm Peak rose from 59.7@184bpm to 63.3@191bpm
The AeT heart rate seems questionable to me since it's changed so much... I mean, I can't hold 172bpm for a six hour ride. I can do 159bpm(the previous reading) but then I can't run. If I want to run I need to be around 140bpm. The drop in AT is small and so generally speaking my AT is about what it was before. What changed here is my top-end.
Interesting numbers. The first time they've jumped like this. And it makes sense. I've been changing the way I train.
Marc was in for his first VO2 session. He had fun with the face mask but adapted quickly. He turned solid numbers which illustrate why we're good training partners. And, as expected, he was up at 199bpm.
Quote of the day: "something smells."
One big takeaway for both Marc and me is that our top-end heart rate zones are a good bit higher than expected. We've got to get the old ticker bouncing to get the right workouts in to progress.
Good benchmarking. Thanks to Matt for administering the tests and for talking us through the numbers. Onward.
Heading to Doc with Terp