The equipment belongs to a friend. I spent 2 minutes looking into purchasing the equipment years ago and when I found out it costs about the same as a small car, I moved on to other gadgets :)
I’ve never had this type of testing done. I use proxies to estimate fitness. With running I use the results of 5K and 10K races. With cycling, I use power meter data.
With this testing, I was hoping to better dial in my estimates and to hopefully validate some other toys I have acquired.
I tested for VO2 max, aerobic threshold, anaerobic threshold, calorie burn at different intensities and the ratio of fat to carbs burned over those intensities.
I’ve never really tested my VO2 before. Scientists believe there is a high correlation to VO2 max and longevity, many now believe there is a causation. Who doesn’t want to live longer :) I know it’s mostly genetic, but untrained athletes and those that don’t train it much may be able to raise it with some blocks of training. I never train even close to my VO2 max so I was wondering if this is something I should be doing. A low number and I would consider modifying my training at times to potentially up my score. I actually stopped the test shortly after passing my anaerobic threshold, so didn’t cap out at my VO2 max, but at 59.3 ml/kg/min, that puts me at a pretty elite level. Conclusion - no VO2 work for me in the near future.
I’ve always had a pretty polarized training plan. Lots of easier Zone 1 and 2 stuff, and some harder efforts, trying not to spend too much time in the middle effort. Data on world-class endurance athletes suggests they spend 80+ % of their time under the aerobic threshold, then 10%-20% of there time over the anaerobic threshold with almost nothing in the middle. Dialing in my zones will see how I compare. I’ve created a bunch of charts in WKO and at first pass, it looks like I spent the right amount of time under the aerobic threshold, but I’m not pushing hard enough on the hard stuff. Too much upper-end Zone 3.
I recently attended a talk by Freddie Rodriguez, an American cycling legend and he put up a bunch of data comparing non-athletes, recreational athletes and world-class athletes. One of the charts showed fat-burning percentages at various levels of effort. Recreational riders burn a very high percentage of carbs very quickly and go to 100% with relatively modest efforts. World-class are really fat adapted. Freddie stated this was from a ton of endurance zone training and training with little to no calories at times (not racing that way). Test results show I am a pretty good fat burner. I don’t go to 100% carbs even at the threshold. I can’t find any benchmark data on the web to see how I compare, but it’s out there somewhere.
When I start to tire in a race I always wonder if it’s mental, calories, hydration or something else. This calorie burn analysis tells be exactly how many carbs I’m burning through and it can help me with calorie planning. Last year I did a bunch of testing for hydration and discovered I was way under drinking. It’s made a huge difference since. First pass at the data and it looks like my calorie intake is pretty good.
I’m also interested in validating other data. Last year I tinkered with a device that measured heart rate variability (HRV) as a sign of fatigue. Lots of professional athletes are starting to use it in training. I found the data interesting but not predictive. My HRV wouldn’t plunge after long or hard workouts and when I would seem fine it would tell me I was too tired to train. I gave up on it.
I recently purchased a muscle oxygen sensor (of course I did!) that measures in real-time your oxygen saturation in your muscles (SmO2). Running this at the same time as my testing allowed me to see if the data made sense. One interesting comment the tester stated was that my test results were very clean, due to a variety of factors including a good warm-up and a smooth pedal stroke. One of the things I’ve noticed with my Sm02 device it that a good warm-up makes a huge difference with muscle oxygenation. If I do the same workout on different days, one with a good warm-up (10-15 minutes), one without, there is a huge difference in the Sm02 variation. A good warmup allows oxygen to surge in when you get going. No warmup makes for a really narrow band of oxygenation. I also wanted to see how the Sm02 data compared to the power and HR data. From the graph below you can see the green area with a good warm-up, oxygen surging into the muscles and then as I go harder, it starts to drop quickly and I quickly go into the red zone. I also wanted to figure out how long I could ride with the dropping Sm02 levels. That data is a little harder to access so I’ll need some work to figure it out. Having real-time data like this to show how hard I’m pushing looks to be valuable.
Still pondering the data, but so far, money well spent!
