In early 2019 I spent a good chunk of money to get a VO2max test done. A VO2max test is one of many ways to assess a person’s cardio-respiratory fitness and usually gets completed in a facility specialized on sports medicine. I am obviously not a pro endurance athlete and I’m a slooooooow runner. So why would I spend all this money on such a test and was it worth it in the end?
A problem statement
Here I was, once again hyperventilating myself up the side of my home mountain, getting more and more discouraged with every step. It was my Garmin’s fault. I always knew I had a higher than average heart rate but the numbers that I saw on that small display during my “easy long runs” were infuriating. I was still very new at this and had many misconceptions about what continuous endurance training would do to my heart rate over time.
The zones from hell
Still at an early stage into the training for my first ultramarathon, I was researching a lot about how to train for a long endurance event. It does not take a lot of googling to find the concept of heart rate zones and their application in endurance training. Typically, a simple formula is used to determine roughly where your ideal training zones are. On a rational level I knew these formulas were just approximations to the true values. However, on an emotional level I did not take this fact into consideration at all, I was just angry that my training and fitness level must be all wrong, since I was NEVER in the recommended training zones, EVER!
Adding data to the equation makes everything better – always
I have a science degree; I should know that accurate data makes everything better. It still took me a while to finally give in and sing up for a VO2max test. The goal was to collect as accurate data as possible on my overall fitness level and on where my true heart rate zones were. It is a commitment of time as well as money and to be honest, I was also a bit nervous about being judged by the employees at the clinic. In the end, I was a complete amateur being very discouraged and confused about my training progress.
For my fellow anxious people, I can assure you there was no need to be fearful of judgment at all. The purpose of this test is to learn more and ultimately better yourself, irrespective of your current fitness level. There is nothing to judge there.
Not only testing my fitness
I’m not going to give you a rundown on the exact procedure of the test, since I am not an expert and there are certainly better sources for that. My experience however started with the realization, that I never ran on a treadmill before. That might be hard to believe but I’m just not a Gym person. The most I did on a treadmill was walking at an incline to warm up before weight training. Looking back, not only having my fitness tested but also my coordination and balance was probably helping to take my mind of the absolute burn you will feel towards the end of the test.
No surprises here – but a lot of encouragement
After completing the test, I had some time to stretch, while the expert was processing the data. Since I read quite a bit about endurance training for amateur athletes beforehand, I expected that the main recommendation would be to focus on aerobic base building training. Spoiler alert that was the main recommendation and probably would be for most amateur athletes anyways.
However, the much more encouraging results for me, was the confirmation that I in fact do have a higher than average hart rate (my max hart rate during the test was at 205) and as a result the thresholds for my heart rate zones and the famous anaerobic threshold were much higher than I would have assumed by simply relying on the formulas. Finally having some hard data to support what I already kind of assumed, gave me a huge confidence boost.
I was not crazy; my fitness was not horrible, and I was not doing everything wrong (at least when it comes to training). I was on the right track and even though my heart is still going fast when climbing uphill, I was able to trust the process much more.
Was it worth it?
Is it necessary for an amateur athlete to do this test? Absolutely not. Was it worth it for me? Heck yeah! For me personally, it was a game changer to have this data available, not only to plan my training up to the race but also the trust my body and the training. Even though there is obviously not much you can take away from my specific results, I hope sharing my experience and how it helped me to overcome some very large mental blocks, inspires you to keep looking for answers and not get discouraged by uncertainty.