Thursday, June 4, 2009

Day #2 Heart rate study a VO2 max test - max

A couple of days ago, I did the second part of the heart rate study which involved running as hard as I could on a treadmill as the incline increased every minute. When we tried the treadmill test last week we were plagued by a nose clips that kept sliding off. Rachel was able to locate a nose clip that kayakers use when doing the eskimo rolls. With the new nose clip the test started and we were starting to get some good data until I started to profusely sweat. Bingo, off goes the nose clip! By this point in the test my legs were still fresh and I was feeling energetic and could have run for another 15 minutes and was keen to see how high I could boost my VO2 max value. Rachel has a couple of minutes of quality data which is what she needed for the research so she pulled the experiment. Oh, crap! So, I know what my VO2 value was somewhere in the high 50s but much lower than my past tests. After the treadmill session I had to wear the heart monitor for another 24 hours. The goal of the research was to compare my pre- and post-test heart rate responses.

One of the fun parts of the test is that I ran on the latest and greatest of treadmills. Rather than running on a continous belt I ran on a Woodway ELG treadmill which has 87 rubber slats which rotate sort of like a caterpillar track. The slats have a nice spring and mimics running on a rubber floor.