test results

having put myelsf through half an hour of discomfort yesterdayon a treadmill i have learned the following. firstly that my vo2 max has improved from 57.89 to 59.something, i have also made considerable improvement with my lactate threshold, in that my blood lactate levels were lower at every level of intensity, from the slowest pace right to the quickest. this is pleasing when you consider that i did a minute longer on the aerobic section of the test (so 19 minutes of running in total as opposed to 18) and i did 7:30 on the anaerobic section which is 30 seconds more. so hopefully, come the summer this will mean that i am more durable and faster as well. the lactate results were especially pleasing when you consider that i haven't done any top end speed work at all yet, so clearly i am doing some thing right. so in theory my current for should translate as follows, according to the information i have found on the serpentine running club website (their website's the best for that sort of thing) 1500 4:39, 3000 9:59 5000 17:13. i'm running a 3k tomorrow at bath university so it will be interesting to see how accurately those predictions translate to the track. it will also be good to guage the early season form of some of the other competitors. going to the sports department at bath university can some times be like a whos who of british sport. for example yesterday i saw craig pickering (fastest white man in history) duncan goodhew the former swimmer now coach. in addition their famous alumni include colin jackson and jason gardner mbe two former world champions on the track-and that just some of the athletics bods!

the other race going on tomorrow is the national road relay championships at sutton park in birmingham, but i wont be there as the club have decided to enter only one team this year despite qualifying two at the midlands. it was disappointing to hear of the withdrawl of rob whalley due to a familly wedding-he declared his availability for the wedding after someone sent an email round with the wrong dates on, so with that our chance of a medal could have gone but one of the great things about the twelve stage is that you never know how the other teams are getting on til they turn up as well