Tuesday 31 December 2019

[Memories] V02max Lab Test

Dear, old, nice memories.
This one is about my first V02max lab test.


V02max is the maximal volume of oxygen you can consume in the single unit of time.

In order to calculate it, you have to do a lab test where you cycle (or run) with an equipment that reads the oxygen you breathe and every other kind of things related.

My test was performed on a cyclette with a fixed wattage.

06 March, 2019.


In this month i restarted running with good results (no races), but i was clearly improving on the bike.
In the last weeks i followed a gym program from a friend. She was studying to have a degree on physical education and sports.
Her gym program was though, but i gained a lot of strength: my squat one maximal rep was now 100 kg. A little more than 160% of my body weight.

However, my objectives were on the bike.
I wanted to improve my cp5 and cp10 and i was doing so with short durations-high intensity workouts.
Too much short (less than 1 hour) to be called “cycling” and also too much hard to be called “cycling”.
I started to think i was doing something new to the cycling world. Or, simply, i didn’t consider myself as a real cyclist.
I also bought a pair of pedals with the Powermeter Sensor mounted on it. So the watts i saw on the app were 100% right.
I discovered that my Smart Trainer underestimated my watts by a good 60/80 watts.
For instance, my right ftp now was 198w, my right cp10 was now 209w and my cp5 was hitting 300w.

This time my watts were right and i come up with an idea. Since i was so interested with cp5 and cp10, then i thought to do a v02max test on a laboratory.
V02max is the maximal volume of oxygen you can consume in the single unit of time.
In order to calculate it, you have to do a lab test where you cycle (or run) with an equipment that reads the oxygen you breathe and every other kind of things related.

My test was performed on a cyclette with a fixed wattage.
After a little warm-up i started at 120w for one minute, then 160w moving up 40w every 2 minutes until i wasn’t able to keep cycling and my v02max value stopped increasing.
The doctor measured my breathing and my lactic acid in my blood.

160w, a little over my easy ride (but i hadn’t a proper warm-up).
200w, everything was fine.
240w, oops! I had over 4 millimoles/liter of lactic acid: i was over my ftp now. However i was still good.
280w, it was hard but i still had energies. It was my anaerobic ventilatory threshold.
320w, it was over my cp5 now. I felt to stop this, but i wanted to finish each of the two minutes. Damnit, it was hard!
360w, i barely managed to finish the previous step but this one was well too much for me. I just endured around 1 minute and the doctor said to stop.

It was an impressive result! I finished over my cp1 with 16,7 millimoles/liter in the blood. It was an immense effort!

My v02max reached its max peak at 320w, with a huge value of 71!
What? I had a value for the v02max of 71!!!

It was classified as a very high trained athlete! The world woman marathon holder had a value of 70, so i was slightly better than a person of this caliber in this world!

I felt so big now.
One of the best success of the last years.
I wanted more. I wanted to see how far i could go.
I started training with a very clear path to follow.


To be continued on:
.....my road from non-cyclist to Zwift Rank A+ (A. Gobbetti)

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