This morning I had an appointment at 6:50am to do the metabolic testing. I called Jeff when I arrived at the lab at Park Lane and Central Expressway in Dallas. I had to travel across 635 so I left a little early. Sure enough, a truck had flipped over on the opposite side of the highway but it didn't affect me and I was early. When we went upstairs, Tom was hooked up to the machine and was on his bike. If you haven't seen this before, your mouth and nose are covered with a mask with a long tube that feeds into the machine. You also have a heart rate monitor. Based on your use of oxygen or carbon dioxide output combined with heart rate, the test is able to tell when you reach your VO2 max which also helps to determine your max heart rate. From there, you can determine what your heart rate zones are. Apparently, when doing long endurance racing, you should stay in particular zones to maximize your endurance. Early on, I was in fat burning mode but as the test got harder, you could tell where I started burning carbs. I don't quite understand all of the numbers yet. I do know my VO2 max was a 31.8. For my age, this is on the lower end of the average scale. More importantly, Jeff will be able to tell me what heart rate zone I should be in for training. It really is a cool thing. How it translates to training or racing should be cool. The whole thing took about 25 minutes. Strange thing was I reached my max but I felt like I could keep going. I don't know what that means. Anyway, it was a cool thing to do even if it meant getting up real early.
My coach Jeff is in the blue shirt and Tom is doing the run test.
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