Vo2 Max??

The days moved through February and Charis and I enjoyed figuring out which races we really wanted to do.

We decided to do Run the Valley, 5k for me and 10k for her, in April.

I had been advised that a duathlon (run, bike, run) would be a good prep race for a triathlon. So we decided on the Cannon Falls duathlon in May because Cannon Falls is such a pretty area.

We were still debating which triathlons to register for. Yes, by this point I had decided more than one might be fun!

At the end of February I did a Vo2 Max test. That was kind of neat.

I met Mark at the fitness club where he works and he put this funky mask on me that had a tube with some wires plugged into a computer. Then I got on the treadmill and after a quick warm-up we started the test. Super fun how much attention that drew! For Pete's sake.

He started out ramping up the speed just a bit and then left it alone. Then he continued increasing the incline periodically until I thought I was going to die. Then he told me to hang on as long as I could before I jumped off! The whole test only took about 15 minutes, but it sure gave us a lot of information. I would recommend that anyone do it.

It gave me great information about my aerobic base (which was better than expected!) and my anaerobic threshold. I got a record of my personal heart rate zones (They were NOT in line with the generalized formula you can do). The results told me at what point I burn fat calories and how many in each heart rate zone. This test also gave me 12 weeks of specific heart rate training to improve my cardio performance. It served as an excellent tool as my training continued. When I re-tested eight months later the changes were pretty dramatic.

I couldn't believe that I continued to lose weight when I felt like I was eating ALL THE TIME...