VO2 Max

I've been signed up to be a guinea pig for some research that is being conducted at one of our major universities. The details are quite boring but they are testing some new supplementation and its effects on athletic performance.

One of the main reasons I have signed up is that part of the protocol is measuring your VO2 MAX. Or, the amount of oxygen your body can consume / kg / minute.

A sedentary person may have a VO2 max of around 20-30 ml/kg/min. Super star athletes like Lance Armstrong have a VO2 of between 83-85ml/kg/min - which is pure freak show stuff.

The testing protocol is on a cycling ergo fitted with SRM pro, gas analyser and heart rate monitoring.
The actual protocol is a 3min x 30watt step with a starting ramp of 2xweight(kg), or for me 166w.

Cruised through the first stages and things started to get interesting from around 350w. One of the problems with doing this test is that you can only breath through your mouth, which is plugged up onto a rubber bite shaped like a snorkel, the problem is that your throat gets very dry quickly and you also produce a lot of saliva that you would normally swallow - but in this case - it just dribbles down. Certainly not very attractive to watch.

I finally blew up in spectacular style after completing the 380w ramp. Peak HR 190bpm. VO2 MAX 55ml/kg/min.

55 isn't a terrible number but it isn't a brilliant one either. One thing I was told was this particular ramp test was not a very accurate way of calculating VO2 due to some factors with the testing procedure. The next test apparently is much more accurate apparently and they usually record an increase of around 5-6 ml/kg/min which would put me around 60ml/kg/min.

The next test is on Thursday and I look forward to a day recovering from the effort!!!!!!