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.