Last weekend, Naveen and I journeyed over to C-bus, OH to take part in a study that is being run by the OSU cycling president. The study involved doing a VO2Max test and on a nonconsecutive day do a 10 mile TT on the computrainer. We decided to cut down on the driving to Columbus and do the VO2 test on Friday, ride easy-ish Saturday, and do the TT on Sunday. Since OSU is a fairly big party school that also meant a good opportunity to sample another college bar scene.
The VO2 test was absolutely brutal...for two reason:
a.) you have to ride stoopid hard
b.) you breathe through a hose (this isn't me):
The mouth piece sucks, you can't swallow well, so you end up drooling all over and the hose fills up with a fair bit of spit too. Nasty.
The test starts off rather easy. Warm up for 10 minutes, then strap on the mask, and the test begins. Pedal at 100 watts, then increase it by 25 watts every minute. 100-275 isn't bad, 300-350 sucks a little, 350-400 ow, 400-425...dead. 425 was the highest I got and held it for about 20 seconds. After a little bit of math and such I learned that the genetic dice were pretty nice to me: 74 ml.kg.min not bad! What was bad, however, is the fact that I'm only using 75% of it when I ride hard. Clearly need to work on that.
The time trial...ugh. Riding hard for ten miles is never fun, its especially not fun inside with the trainer set to '100% drag', nor is it fun slightly hung over. But it is was it is, I rode as hard as I felt like doing given the situation and did it in 24 minutes and ~30 seconds. Apparently that was the 2nd fastest time of the study so far...go figure.
All in all it was a great weekend and I learned a bit about myself. After spending the week tracking down other cyclists who has a 74 VO2, it looks like the potential is there, I'm just not training smart (or racing smart). Things to work on for sure.
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