VO2 Max Test Results

Friday, I finally connected with the famous Dr. Will Peveler from Northern Kentucky University. He is a cycling expert and director of NKU's Human Performance Laboratory. He has been busy researching pacing strategies through extensive testing of competitive cyclists/triathletes. Locals are happy to volunteer to be his lab rats, since it means an opportunity for a free VO2 Max test, which can normally cost a couple hundred buck$.

Dr. Will is Dr. Evil. But he's really nice.

To prepare for the VO2 test, I took Thursday off from workouts. I woke up at 6 am and ate ~500 calories of dates and about a liter of water. When I got to the lab, it looked like one part Nerd-Jock-Heaven and one part Pit of Despair. Dr. Will took my height, weight, percent body fat and a general health questionnaire.

Dr. Will set me up with a relatively comfy fit despite the fact that the bike kinda looked like it once belonged to Jerry Seinfeld's dad. But this is the option if you only bring your SPD cleats.

Then Dr. Will puts the face mask on you. There are other VO2 tests which don't require a mask, but do require taking blood. Regarding the blood-draw method, Dr. Will said, "The inflection point is harder to find." I didn't slow the fast-talking doctor down to ask what he meant (or to insist on a blood draw), but I think you'll see what he means when we look at my results.

Special valves in the mask allow fresh air to come in from the right/white tube my exhaled CO2 to go out the left/clear tube, where it gets analyzed by the computer.  The mask if VERY hard to break in.

Darth Vader's mask is also hard to breath in. But for Darth Junior and a VO2 max test... you can't NOT ride with the mask.

Once I had the mask firmly on my face, I had to pedal the bike above 90 revolutions per minute for the duration of the test. Every two minutes, Dr. Will would add an increment of resistance. Through the feedback of my heart rate monitor and the breathing monitor, he was able to push me and push me until I reached failure. So, it was I who decided when the test was over.

I had mentally prepared to embrace the pain cave all week, but failure is never an easy place to go, even if we do it several times per week in Spinning. I lasted about 15 minutes before I tapped out. Maybe I could have gone more, but in addition to the effort being extremely hard, having the mask restrict my breathing made me feel claustrophobic and panicky-- a bit too far beyond my "comfort zone" of normal excruciating pain.

Dr. Will gave me a two page print-out of a table of numbers, which is difficult to make sense of. But once I put them in graphical form, it's a bit more intuitive to see what's going on and it seems to match what I saw Dr. Will looking at on his computer monitor. 

RESULTS
The red line is where I blew up and terminated the test. The intersection of the red line and purple line (VO2/kg) is the ultimate goal of what we are looking for-- VO2 MAX. In other words, what is the largest volume of oxygen my body can breathe in and make use of to burn its fuel in my cells. It was 68.7 ml/kg/min (or 4.78 L/min). At this point of maximum effort, my cycling heart rate is 189 beats per minute. Note that your maximum heart rate is not usually equivalent across sports and it's a physiological feature that many experts say cannot be changed. Your max is your max. It's not bad. It's not good. It just is. But my VO2 max value of 68.7 ml/kg/min definitely can be changed. It's my goal to bump it up.

OTHER STUFF
As you can see, my heart rate is indicated in orange and increases as Dr. Will adds resistance and as time passes (horizontal axis). The green line has something to do with my "ventilation" rate. It stays pretty much parallel with my heart rate until it reaches the aqua line-- my "Threshold". At this point, ventilation and heart rate de-couple. This is what Dr. Will meant by "inflection point". It is the super-critical point, called The Lactate Threshold (or Anaerobic Threshold), beyond which lactate is produced in the muscles faster than it can be removed. This is where your exercise activity crosses over from being primarily aerobic to primarily anaerobic. So, 171 beats per minute is my threshold heart rate. This completely agrees with my suspicion from low-tech DIY thresholds tests at Spinning class. It is also the heart rate I tend to average for a 40k time trial. Cycling guru, Joe Friel, refers to this pace as your Critical Power 60 (CR60)-- as in, this is the maximum power you can sustain for 60 minutes. He also calls it Functional Threshold Power (FTP).

Dr. Will said the highest VO2 max he had ever tested on someone was 79-80 ml/kg/min. He also said that a sedentary college aged male measures at about 35 ml/kg/min. Cross country skiers are famous for having VO2 max's in the 90s ml/kg/min! But what does it all mean? How can I get faster?

The most important outcome for me for this experiment was to find my threshold. This has far more relevance to my race pace than VO2 max. In fact, maximum power is not the determining factor of race victories; rather, your efficiency at sub-max levels is more predictive of endurance race success.

The secret to improving your race pace is to train just below, at, around, about your lactate threshold. With smarter training through the season, bigger efforts should be perceived as more manageable and sustainable. At this point in the spring season, 171 bpm is 89% of my max heart rate. As the season progresses, I might be able to race for one hour at 95% of my max heart rate.

FYI
While searching some cycling forums, I found that world class pro rider Ivan Basso achieved the following results on his VO2 Max test:

VO2 Max Test

VO2 5.760 L/min
VCO2 6.458 L/min
VO2/kg 83.5 mL/kg/min
VCO2/kg 93.6 mL/kg/min
VE(BTPS) 215.8 L/min
Max HR: 196
Max Power: 490 Watts
Max Power to weight ratio: 7.1 Watt/kg

Ananerobic Threshold
VO2 4.680 L/min
VCO2 4.824 L/min
VO2/kg 67.8 mL/kg/min
VCO2/kg 69.9 mL/kg/min
VE(BTPS) 129.1 L/min
AT HR: 175
AT Power: 380 Watts
FTP power to weight ratio: 5.5 Watt/kg

These are the numbers it takes to win the Giro d'Italia!

Real men wear pink (in Italy especially).

As the season progresses, I plan to get tested again and we'll see how the numbers change.

Highlights for Kids

In a short stretch of just three mile along my ride to work, I can play a real life game of Highlights for Kids with the city's bike lane signage. Spot the Difference!

I try to come up with unique names for all the different personalities that show up.

Squatty Floating Mushroom Head (AKA Dwyer's Grotesque Shoulder)

Chevron Ghost Rider

Elongated Mushroom Head Mime

Virgin and Child

Layin' it on Thick

Shin-Splitter Squatty Mushroom Head

If you've read the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, then this week's bike adventure is begging you to ask an obvious question. If we let the City of Cincinnati know that they are using six different standards for marking roads, will that save them $1,000,000,000 in system inefficiencies? If that's the case, then I vote to use the savings to make sure that each bike commuter in the city gets to have one of the road markings painted in their image. And mine is going to be like this guy's.

53 Miles per Burrito and My Two Moms

Let's talk about yields-- squeezing a buffulo out of a nickel, blood out of a turnip, or milk out of grass. Wait...what? That's right-- getting something from "nothing". But first, let's talk about getting nothing from everything.

Nothing from Everything
It takes a cow in Ohio about 2 hours of "work" to eat 9 lbs of dry grass. Then, through the magic of metabolism in a four-chambered gut, 1 gallon of non-chocolate milk can come vaccumed out of her wriggly teat, ready to drink, if you're a raw milk drinker. My lovely biological mom, Mother #1 (God bless her), loves the stuff.

Assuming her 20 mile round trip to pick up one gallon of raw milk takes place in an average two ton car, getting 20 miles per gallon, she probably pays less for the gas than she does for the milk even though the oil is pumped from miles beneath the earth/ocean, refined, and possibly shipped from a combat zone half-way around the world. (Only 7% of oil comes from a "free" country, says Freedom House).

It took about 200,000 lbs of ancient plants and millions of years of horrible conversion rates and geologic abracadabra to get just 1 gallon of oil. That's equivalent to 40 acres of harvested wheat, roots, and stalks to drive just one 20 mile round-trip to the milk co-op. 98 tons of plants per gallon! It isn't exactly nothing from everything, but it's pretty close.

Something from Nothing
My wife's lovely burrito-loving mother, Mother #2, gifted me the sticker version of the famous T-shirt below. By now you've probably seen the "53 Miles per Burrito" T-shirt (or the back of one) worn by cycling-enthusiasts.

Have you ever asked yourself, What does it all mean?

For the sake of peer review, here are some of my own rough calculations:
If I ride my bike 20 miles/hour, I burn about 10 calories/minute. That comes to 1 mile/30 cal.
(By "calorie", we're talking food calories which are technically kilocalories.) I've looked up the nutrition information for the the veggie burrito bowl I typically order at Chipotle and it comes to ~600 calories, depending on the heftiness of that guacamole scoop, which I hope is quite hefty. So the mileage I would get out of my $6.25 burrito bowl is about 20 miles' worth. That's almost the price of two gallons of gas. Worth it? You bet! When you consider the benefits and enjoyment of riding the bike you don't even need to factor in all the externalized costs of oil (i.e. environmental degradation, war, sickness, traffic jams) that don't get paid at the pump.

Of course, one could go farther than 20 miles on one burrito if they were to ride slower than 20 miles/hr. This is because of the force of wind resistance quadruples even if speed merely doubles. Furthermore, most people's non-Taco-Bellian burritos are quite a bit bulkier than mine-- overflowing with the calorie-dense extras that I don't get-- meat, cheese, and sour cream. When the burritos get in the 1000 calorie range, then you have no choice but to ride quite a bit slower than 20 mph, thus improving your efficiency. So, 53 mpg is realistic...depending on fitness level, body shape, bycicle type, weight, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Fun food math
Big ass burrito: $6.95 for 1000 calories = 153 cal/$.
Big Hamburger at McWhatshisname's:  $3.79 for 540 calories = 142 cal/$.
8 banana smoothie (2 lbs): $1.00 for 800 calories = 800 cal/$.
3 cantaloupe smoothie: $6.00 for 900 calories = 150 cal/$

Not only does the banana win the calorie per $ value meal championship, but even when shipped by fossil fuel-powered boat, it's carbon footprint is still tiny compared to almost all foods, except maybe the dandelion greens from my back yard.

A dandee-lion! Must be the last one of the season. -Sid

Connections are Capital

The best things in life aren't things. Relationships, for one, kick ass, and I don't just mean romantic ones. Recently, I've become spellbound by the nature of RELATIONSHIPS and their overlooked power.

Hydration is half the battle.

Hydration really is half the battle.

Tough Mudder for ants

Tough Mudder for humans

I have no idea where I'm going. You have no idea where you're going. But TOGETHER, we pretty much know which way to go.

Why won't we take the honey and give the royal jelly to this girl and make her have all the babies.

Flying V-- nature

Flying V-- cinema (Mighty Ducks)

The Stadium Wave-- even impersonal relationships can make amazing things happen.

Calorie for calorie, Joule for Joule, a peloton is the most efficient form of locomotion on the Planet!

The rider in front of this pace line is doing the most work. Everyone behind him is riding at the same speed but using about 30% less effort.

Slightly more complicated than the traditional pace line above is the group cycling tactic known as the Belgian Wheel. Instead of one pace line, there are two-- a fast line on the right and a slower line on the left. Each person's turn at the front of the right pace line is super-fast. Then that person peels off to the left, catching a break, and gradually folds back into the right pace line. See my diagram of the Belgian Wheel below. (I'm sorry if my use of Mexicans offends you. It's the only way I can draw a human from above).

The Belgian Wheel is kind of like a social structure known as a Rotating Credit Association. The concept is basically a potluck dinner club, where each person takes turn hosting the potluck and everyone brings a dish.

Among nineteenth century farmers, it took the form of a good ol' fashioned barn raising. Every first Saturday of the month, for instance, neighbors would take turns helping someone in the group build their barn. This same method is often used by immigrants to America for helping launch entrepreneurial ventures, where traditional lending sources don't step up to the plate. But the act is more than merely a step around the banking system. The greater benefits are the social ties that ensue and the cross-pollination of skill sets and knowledge. The community is better than it would be if the goal were achieved through traditional usury. (O whoops, did I say usury? I'm guess I'm still bitter about the terms of my first business loan).

Neighbors, family, and friends can and should use the Rotating Credit Association for other projects as well. In fact, my brothers and I are using it for all sorts of projects-- from insulating houses to building fences, to excavating random manly stuff we've dreamed of excavating. A derivative of the Rotating Credit Association is even written into the City of Cincinnati's Climate Action Plan, as a strategy to reduce green house gas emissions and help citizens reduce their energy usage through home energy performance upgrades. We'll have to see if we can force that issue a little more this year.