the treadmill test...

i can see why it was likened to having a tooth amputated without anaesthetic. it wasn't just the equipment but all the breathing apparatus you had to wear. it was very uncomfortable, the main reason for that being that instead of wearing a face mask like they do at some places where they do these tests it was a snorkle device that was attatched to your head via a head brace and attatched to a machine via the usual tubes and electronic paraphernalia. then they put a clip on my nose which was in turn placed on top of a plaster to stop it from slipping off, which at first i was secretly hoping it would, but eventually i learnt to tolerate its presence. its purpose was to make sure that all the oxygen/carbon dioxide that i processed was captured by the machines/computer.

first things first we sorted out all the usual paper work and disclaimers etc and i was allowed a ten minute warm up at low speed on the machine during which a heart rate of about 88 bpm was recorded. before that commenced though a blood sample was taken to record my blood lactate, haematocrit levels and all sorts of other biological data that the non sporting people out there have never even heard of. a heart rate monitor was used, i don't particularly like them very much because they constrict your breathing, but i endured it once just for the purpose of gaining information about myself.

once the warm up was complete, i was allowed to stretch etc just to make sure that i didnt pull any muscles or any thing. that is some thing that you don't want to happen on a treadmill as it can be positively dangerous as it wont stop for you and you'll go flying off the back as happened to robbie bugden once (one of my club mates) when he twinged a muscle and cracked his head open on one of the bars when he fell off!

so dr jonathan robinson and one of his female assistants decided to set me off on the treadmill at 12 kph and it was decided (or rather dictated to me) that we would do 6 3 minute intervals at increasing speeds with a 30 second break on each of them to take a blood sample from my finger. it felt easy at first but it got progressively harder and on the old rate of percieved exertion scale i gradually moved up from about 8 or 9 to more like 17 or 18 (the maximum is 20) so after 6 stages that represented the end of the first section of the test. i then had a timed ten minute break in which to stretch keep loose and replce any lost fluids. now this was the really nice bit. at the end of the test i was back on the treadmill this time at 15 kph, slightly slower than the 17kph i finished the first section of the test on. sounds easy, but for every minute you were on the treadmill they increased the incline by 1%. it feels slightly easier a first but believe me it gets very hard very quickly. when i asked what the average was they said for an elite athlete it was between 6 and ten minutes. i manged to get past the start of the 8th stage by which time my legs were shot to pieces. i had the report today. there was a hell of a lot of data on it and it said that my vo2 max was 57.89 lactate levels at the end were7.46 mmol and my haematocrit (red blood cell)levels were 47%. the most important thing it said was that all the data suggested that i was a long distance runner. when i mentioned this to mike he said that he had always thought that but because of the greater nembers involved in road running he recommended i do track to make a greater impact on my opponents as relatively the number of people running on the track is at an all time low.