The results have been counted and verified...

So, yesterday I went back to the Sport Science department to get my results from last weeks VO2 max test. In addition to this Dr Stewart Laing asked if I would be interested in doing a Body composition test which sounded interesting so I agreed to do that, although not really knowing what it would involve.

The body composition stuff involved me stripping down to my boxers, had I known I would have brought shorts but instead my Reindeer boxer shorts had to do... I then got skinfolds tested on my bicep, tricep, back, abs, hip, calf and thigh. As well as this the circumference of my guns and my legs was taken. Interestingly my right thigh circumference is 2cm larger than that of my left leg... kind of like a crab I suppose. I need to sort that out apparently it's a significant difference!

Anyway, it turns out that at the moment I am around 12.8% body fat, not too surprising as I haven't been training too much and have just been eating instead! My tubbiest parts were my back and my thighs, and the leanest was my bicep for some reason, which was equal to elite athletes at 3.9% haha. Overall this equates in me having to carry around 9.7kg of the blubbery stuff. Stewart reckons I could shave 2kg's off of this with the right diet and training, which would ultimately make me faster. Nice.

Now onto the results from last weeks testing. My absolute VO2 max came in at 4.85 litres per min. Which means my body can use up 4.85 litres of oxygen every minute. Converting this into relative terms, which divides the 4.85 litres by my body weight on the day, which was around 76.7kg, gives a relative VO2 max of 63ml/kg. Which is good apparently. It's no Lance Armstrong, his was around 85, but elite cyclists tend to have values of 62-74 so I'm within that bracket which is cool. What's even cooler is that if I got my weight down to 74kg, this would put my relative VO2 max up to around 66ml/kg. Funky fresh.

The lactate threshold results showed that I started producing loads of Lactic acid and feeling the burn at a heart rate of around 160bpm. By improving my lactate threshold I'd be able to pump out more power for longer and that would ultimately make me faster... and that's the aim of the game.

My Blood lactate curve, the higher the blood lactate the more it burns!

So now I know all this stuff what can I do with it? Well, I've been designated to two masters students as their project for one of their modules. They will help me improve on my limitations and do some more testing on me in the future, and now I have results to compare to I can see if I've improved. All in all exciting stuff for me... almost worth paying these university fees after all.

North Wales cylocross Series: Round 2- Bethesda Duathlon

Sunday the 24th October saw round 2 of the local cyclocross series head once again to Bethesda leisure centre with yet more great sunny weather, but 10 degrees colder than it was a fortnight ago! The race was run as a duathlon involving 5 laps cycling, 1 lap running, 5 laps cycling and another lap running to finish. Cyclocross duathlons are pretty rare, I wouldn't be surprised if this was Britains only event, but nevertheless I was excited to get going and test my running legs.

Me leading the way from the start. www.sportpicturescyrmu.co.uk 

As is the norm with cyclocross racing, the start involved a sprint to the first corner and as it happened I managed to get there first, which was cool. What wasn't so cool was that I went the wrong way at the corner so about 10 people went passed me, making my efforts pretty useless. Ah well lesson learnt. The first couple of laps were pretty chaotic, with positions changing frequently until everyone settled into their own rhythm. The first 5 laps of cycling was soon over and done with so it was onto the transition, where I had another blunder, somehow managing to fall off my bike on the last corner, so I ended up looking like a plonker and in addition to that my chain came off. Smooth.

Someone taking a tumble behind me on a descent. www.sportpicturescyrmu.co.uk

I hadn't done any running straight off of the bike in a while so I had jelly legs big time. I found it hard to get a good rhythm going and overall felt quite slow. I didn't catch the person in front or get overtaken by anyone so it was pretty uneventful. I found watching cyclists with all their gear still on and running quite amusing, something about it doesn't look quite right, kind of like a hermit crab with out it's shell I suppose haha. Then again I must have looked the same!

I got to the transition from the run to the next bike stage and Barry Davies had kindly put my chain back on so I was straight off for another 5 laps. I got overtaken by one guy a couple of laps in, but then again he was using the concrete cycle path instead of the grass on the long hilly bit of the course, which no-one was meant to be riding on. I wont name any names but they're only cheating themselves haha. I managed to keep Llyn Cycling Clubs John Holt within sight until the run came around when he had about 200m on me.

www.sportpicturescymru.co.uk

I started the final running lap and felt a lot better than I had for the first run, I got a good rhythm going and had a rabbit to chase, steadily making ground on 5th position in front. with about 200m to go I caught and passed John, and gave it everything I had left to keep it that way. I crossed the finish line in 5th place, and was pretty dam shattered.

Due to two veterans finishing ahead of me it turned out I came 3rd in the seniors category, so I stayed around for the prize presentation and got a voucher for Revolution Bikes which is pretty cool. Might splash out on some energy bars and gels for next weeks TLI National Cyclocross Championship. Can't wait. Big up to Gwynfor James once again for getting some great shots, check out the rest of them here.

Overall it was a good race. Things could have gone a bit smoother but then heinsight is a great thing. I'll be better rested, better fuelled and pumped for next weeks race so we'll see how that goes...

Testing, testing

On the 21st October I became a human Guinea Pig for an hour as I got my VO2 Max, Lactate Threshold and heart rate zones tested at the Sport Science department of Bangor University, as part of a Masters teaching session. Dr Stewart Laing was looking for people to test in order to show his masters students how it's done. This would usually cost over £150 so I was well up for it!

Before:still smiling

A persons VO2 Max is basically the amount of oxygen your body can take in at maximum exertion. It undermines your athletic potential and is thought to be largely genetic. The higher your VO2 max, ultimately the faster you will go. Lactate threshold is the point at which your body starts producing so much lactic acid that you get that nasty burning feeling in your muscles which causes them to stop working properly and slow you down. Lactate threshold is measured in terms of heart rate usually, so I if a persons Lactate threshold was at 90% of their max heart rate, they will be faster than someone with the same VO2 max but a lactate threshold of only 80% max heart rate. Overall these two factors affect how fit and how fast you are/could be.

 During: left; starting to feel the burn right; getting blood lactate tested

The testing was done on a static bike. I had a wear a mask which was hooked up to a machine that examined the amount, and composition of the air I was breathing in and out. The way the test worked was I started on a fixed resistance of 135watts, warmed up on that for 5 minutes and then from then on the resistance increased by 35watts every 3 minutes. As well as this, at each 3 minute interval I had to have blood samples taken from my finger tips with these little pin gun things. They don't hurt but by the end my hands were pretty bloody!

Left: Reaching the end, legs feeling like lead.  Right: Game over, looking wrecked, feeling wrecked.

The test continued getting harder until I couldn't keep going any longer, so as you can imagine it was pretty damn hard, but the efforts should be rewarded with some useful data that can help with my training. I get my results sometime next week, I'll probably post them on here unless it turns out I have the power and fitness of a guinea pig, if that's the case I'll take up twitching, or trainspotting, or tweeting?

and so it begins...

After a few weeks of taking it easy, my training for next season kicked off properly today. So I Went for a nice steady spin with a few local guys. We were lucky with the weather, nice but nippy with no rain. It's currently bucketing it down outside, and my housemate has just come in from a ride absoultely soaked. Feeling pretty smug and dry right now haha! This is the route we took today recorded by Gareths Garmin... it's a good one!

A Breakfast Sensation

Apple season is upon us and I have recently harvested A LOT of the green and red beauties from my garden. So basically my household has a lot of apples, and due to this I have found my new favourite breakfast, and in my opinion it's a taste sensation!

The breakfast consists of.... oats, chopped dried apricots, raisins, home-made apple sauce, milk, and a scoop of whey protein. Until a few weeks ago I thought you had to cook oats before eating them for some reason, but it turns out you don't, so I just whack everything together and munch away. Funky fresh.

So go ahead and give it a go. It's nutritious and delicious!

Every second counts

Cyclocross is a pretty technical sport. It involves a lot of dismounting and remounting along with tricky corners, hills and descents... So when I was contacted by cyclocross legend Barry Davies to see if I wanted any advice I seized the opportunity.

Today Barry and I headed over to the university fields and he showed me some tips that should help me gain some time in the 'cross races in the coming months. The way he put it was: 'If  you had to get on and off around 3 times per lap, and there are 12 laps that would be 36 dismounts/remounts. Now if you can complete each of these 5 seconds faster you would gain 3 minutes in time which is often equal to around half a lap'. So by improving my technique alone I could possibly finish a few places further up than I have in the past. Nice.

Barry also leant me a cyclocross book which I'm going to plough through to get any little tips that could save me time. Perhaps one day I'll be as smooth as the guys in this video (minus the crashes):



A big thanks to Barry for today and I look forward to the next race on Sunday!

North Wales Cyclocross League- Round 1: Bethesda

This morning was the first round of the North Wales Cyclocross League and what a beauty of a morning it was. Clear skies, light winds and most importantly, warm. The league consists of 10 races going down over the next few months. The way it works is at each race you pick up points depending on where you place and at the end of the series your best 8 races count towards your final score! Cool.

www.sportpicturescymru.co.uk

The same kind of thing was run last year and I took part in a few, usually racing against 20-30 riders, however today there were around 50 which was great to see! Looks like cyclocross is taking off. So, after everyone had a few practise laps to work out where we had to go we all lined up at the start and were ready to roll...

www.sportpicturescymru.co.uk

Once the raced kicked off, we had to do a few laps around a flat field to string everyone out before we moved onto the real stuff. The course was great, pretty challenging, technical and it hurt, a lot. I can't really remember much of the race it was all a bit of a blur but I do know it hurt and that I finished 8th overall which I'm happy with. There were some seriously strong riders out there and the winner, Mat Prichard seemed to be going well as he lapped towards the end of the race! Nice one man.

www.sportpicturescymru.co.uk

Another thing pointed out by the race was that my bike is still creaking, it started sometime last week and seems to be coming from the right crank. I paid £20 to have everything around there taken out, greased and tightened up the other day... but the creaking continues, and it's the kind of noise that could drive any grown man mad. Mat from the bike shop joked that it might be too much power?  Haha I don't think so, but it's definitely annoying me. I'll be taking it back down to Revolution Bikes to see what the deal is.

www.sportpicturescymru.co.uk

Nice one Barry Davies and Revolution Bikes for putting together a great race, and also thanks to Gwynfor James of Sports Pictures Cymru for taking some great shots. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Is this what being old feels like?

This week I started doing weight sessions for the first time since February. I've been taking it relatively easy doing light weights with high reps but still, I woke up today and have completely seized up! Better get the WD40 out.

Time for a hot bath... Wheres the Stannah Stair lift?