Blog 2 – 10th January
A quick hop, skip and a jump and off I head back to, what
will be referred to from now on as, the devil’s porch, or to many,
Hertfordshire University. This time I’ve brought my trusty stead, my road bike.
This will be used later in another barrage of lung busting, heart pumping
tests. My attendance was required to complete month 0 testing, provide a start
point, the beginning of a long journey ahead. Its real then, I’m actually doing
this, I’m going to be a triathlete, no wait an Ironman. Anyway let’s not get
carried away just yet...
So the testing, which we were told to allocate around 4
hours to complete, covered pretty much everything you could and would want
testing. I had to go back through the body composition measures and ECG scan,
similar to the pre-screening tests, it was then on to a functional assessment.
Basically, this was a check of my generally joint movement or lack of it as it
turns out. From there I was taken to another lab, I think the biomechanics
facility, in which I had my feet scanned, gait analysed, jump power assessed and
a fairly tame running economy test. I say fairly tame due to the problems with
the gas analysis face masks playing up, which meant that I had to complete the
test with a mouth piece. For those that may have never completed this type of
test, it was like running whilst biting down on a snooker cue as it bounces up
a down in your month; hardly comfortable.
After a 10 minute breather and thinking, hmm I wonder how
much more... “Right then Gareth, its back over to the human performance lab for
the lactate profile test and then another VO2max test.” said my chaperone. Well
need I remind you, what joy! The excitement was just too much, I’d felt like I
had just won the lottery and then realised the ticket was stuck to the inside
of the washing machine on the spin cycle. Oh well, push on, I thought. I was
quite pleased to be honest, once it was over that is. As yet I don’t have the results;
I guess that could affect some of my training decisions in the early stages,
but my VO2max, pretty much stayed the same as my pre screening test. This is a
bit of a double edge sword, in that I’d been training pretty hard at times
since the screening but on the other side we have just had Christmas, always a
chore to keep the fitness levels up and the nutrition on course. Anyway it was
a start point! It’s now a waiting game the official start date of the study is
January 21st; you may not think it but I can’t wait...[GN]
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