Fitness testing - the full story

Believe it or not (and I realise that most people won’t), there’s actually a fair amount of work involved with this here blog. I know that it seems like I just scrawl out whatever random musings materialise in my noggin, but I do actually but some thought and time into it... and that’s the excuse I’m using for the couple of weeks that have come between my first two Aerofit scan postings and this here one.

On a serious note, it’s an interesting and worthwhile subject, and I didn’t want to do a rush job. The past couple of weeks I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition and just couldn’t find the time, but the best things in life are worth waiting for, right?

So, here we go with analysis of my cycling and running. As it’s been such a long time between these posts, I decided to paste posts 1 and 2 to the beginning to create one long but, hopefully, continuous and intelligible post. If you have an elephantine memory, just skip down to the bottom to the part where you see a load of scientific looking graphs and read from around there.

For the rest....

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Anyone who takes a look at that little bar above (the one that says ‘Follow My Training’) will have noticed quite a difference in the way I train of late. Of course, it still boils down to swim/bike/run/core/stretch, but the way sessions are approached has changed.

Previously, for example, you’d have seen things like ‘24k long run’ or ‘60k bike into 40minute harder run’. But these have now become ‘25k in upper Tz1 [Training Zone 1]’ and ‘60k Tz1-Tz2 into 40 minute run in Tz2’.

So, where did all this extra information on training zones come from? My Aerofit scan.

Triathletes, as I’ve said before, love a bit of geekery – in the form of carbon goodies, shiny new gadgets and analysing data. And there’s lots of data that can be analysed: VO2 max, lactate threshold, average watts etc...

One recent innovation to find its way to the Middle East is Aerofit (it was originally pioneered in Germany but is now available in loads of countries around the world). But, as Sreeya from Aerofit explains, they see their scan as more of a training tool than purely a fitness test used to produce data.

“We see it as the leading fitness coaching service in the Middle East, which guarantees you effective weight loss and improvement in your sports performance. We can provide individualised ‘fact-based’ training plans based on a scientific analysis [called the Aeroscan] of your individual metabolism.”

Fair enough. So, how does it do that?

“AeroFit determines your VO2, anaerobe threshold, fat and carbohydrate metabolism and optimum training zones,” answers Sreeya.

Unless you’re already pretty health savvy and into the science of fitness, much of this will be as intelligible as a sea lion singing karaoke – what we actually want to know about any of these tests or scans, if we’re being honest, is one thing: will it make me faster?

“You will significantly improve your stamina, speed and endurance by training your body to produce energy efficiently. You will get much faster on the run and bike, be able to estimate your racing times, strategise the right pace for your next race and plan your nutrition intake to fuel your body sufficiently,” says Sreeya.

That’ll be a ‘yes’ then.

“You will see your race times improving and visibly see progress in just a few weeks of training.”

From my basic understanding of the science behind the Aerofit scan, all athletes can choose to train at a wide range of intensities – you can walk, you can sprint, or you can do anything in between. Whether you’re a Kona qualifier, a mid-pack triathlete, or just someone who wants to lose a bit of weight and get a little fitter, the major limiter is almost always time. The data provided by the Aeroscan tells you what intensities you should work at to maximise gains in the time that you have available.

So, what does doing the Aerofit scan involve?

Well, it’s pretty simple really – and no more taxing than the average gym session. A couple of days before, I fill in an information sheet which lists things like my age, weight, how much I exercise and my fitness goals. This sheet also includes a set of fairly straightforward instructions, telling me to keep vigorous workouts to a minimum in the 48 hours preceding my Aerofit scan, and not to eat for a few hours before.

I arrive at the gym at The Address Dubai Mall – one of Aerofit’shomes, along with the Up & Running clinic on Al Wasl Road – and go into the plush changing rooms to don my shorts, t-shirt and trainers.

The only other apparatus involved are a standard stationary bike, a treadmill and the Aerofit mouthpiece – essentially a tube that you place into your mouth and leading to a chord, with a nose pinch that not only keeps the mouthpiece steady but also guarantees that all inhalation and exhalation goes through the mouth. The mouthpiece feeds information into a laptop that records the results.

Before doing anything, I sit down – at rest – and breathe through the mouthpiece for 30 seconds. Then we begin on the bike. I cycle at a steady cadence on an easy resistance for a few minutes and then Sreeya hands me the mouthpiece – I continue cycling just the same put while breathing into the mouthpiece for 30 seconds. 

Sreeya then whips off the mouthpiece and increases the resistance; again, I cycle steadily for a few minutes before I continue but breathing through the mouthpiece for 30 seconds. 

This pattern continues – incremental increase in resistance, a few minutes of normal riding, 30 seconds into the mouthpiece... and then Sreeya tells me to stop, taking down the resistance for me to cool down gradually. It’s pretty painless, took less than 15 minutes and, in terms of perceived effort, I’d say that even at the top resistance I’m still only on 5 out of 10.

There’s a few minutes’ break as Sreeya and fellow expert Markus take a look at the results, walking me through a few of the most obvious points and patterns.

I then jump up on to the treadmill and repeat the process, starting at an easy 8kph (the pace you start at depends on your ability), running for a couple of minutes normally, running for 30 seconds with the mouthpiece on, then upping the pace by 2kph and repeating the process. 

The only difference is that, due to the results I was registering, I stayed on the treadmill longer than I did on the bike and was at a fair old pace (for me, at least) by the end of the scan – just over 17 minutes later. The whole process took around an hour for both bike and run.

Again, I cooled down and watched as Sreeya and Markus looked at, translated and explained my results.

So, here’s the bike results:

And here’s the run:

But what do they mean? Well, let’s go back to the bike.

You can extrapolate all manner of conclusions from this; everything from my base metabolism to how many calories I’ll burn/require during an Ironman bike leg, given my effort of level (as reflected by my heart rate). If you know what you’re looking for, there’s as many answers here as there are questions. But, in a nutshell, these are the vital stats:

Again, you can interpret all this is any number of ways but my primary aim was to discover my training zones and which ones I need to work on most. Information like this:

Sreeya and Markus explain the results:

“Every human body has approximately 1,700-2,000 Kcals of carbohydrate storage whereas a substantially higher amount of fat storage of approximately 80,000 Kcals. Hence, in order to improve your fitness and sports performance or lose fat, it is important to train your body to burn more fat calories, which can happen by training in your correct heart rate zones.

“For endurance athletes, as long as you keep burning fat, you are using an almost unlimited storage of energy and you will be able to perform at these levels for very long periods of time. It is only when a very high amount of your calorie consumption comes from carbohydrates, in your case at HR 128 or 210 watts, your endurance for long distance events will go down significantly.

“Overall, you have a low fat metabolism. Your highest fat burn rate of 63% is achieved at HR 88 and 60 watts followed by a very sharp decline thereafter. Your anaerobe zone is reached at HR 137. Majority of your biking should occur in the aerobe zones, TZ1 and TZ2. Your training should primarily focus on building fat metabolism. Do long bike rides in TZ1 up to HR 110. This will increase your overall endurance for long distance races as you are training your body to burn more fat calories of which you have an almost unlimited amount of storage. In addition, do some bike rides in TZ2 especially during racing season. This will improve your stamina and speed performance and push out your anaerobe threshold further to the right. However, it is important to first focus on building fat metabolism in the low-medium HR to improve overall biking profile.”

Some people show vastly different results in bike and run. They may, for example, be an extremely efficient runner who burns predominantly fat until a very high speed however, when they jump on the bike, they have to work far harder and therefore burn predominantly carbohydrates unless they keep their heart rates very low.

That isn’t the case for me, however; my bike and run show very, very similar results and Sreeya and Markus were able to make almost the same conclusion.

To conclude, it’s clear that I’m a pretty fit person who is well-trained. It’s also clear that I’m predominantly a shorter distance, power athlete, rather than a natural endurance athlete. This is backed up by the fact that, even when a lot younger and when I was a competitive swimmer, I always specialised in the sprint events like 50m-100m fly and backstroke. I made regional school track finals in sprints and hurdle events, but you’d have found me at the back of a cross-country, in spite of my aerobic capacity garnered from swimming. And although I’ve been doing triathlon for a couple of years now, I’ve still not had enough time to build that big aerobic (fat burning) base.

In which case – as I’m saying that the Aerofit scan backed up what I already knew – does that make it pointless?

Not at all. As I’ve explained, there are all manner of results and data you can pull from this and some of the more interesting information for me revolves around the number of calories I burn per hour at a given rate of exertion. This has helped me to really nail a nutrition plan for my upcoming Ironman.

But the zones themselves have proven useful. It’s all very well to say, as someone still relatively new to endurance sports and is built for power rather than distance, I need to train long and easy to build an endurance base. But what is ‘long and easy’. Having those exact figures – those magic numbers if you will – has informed all my longer training since to the point that, when doing my longer  solo sessions, I no longer even have the speed/pace on display on my Garmin, judging everything on heart rate.

A few days ago, I went out and did one of my longest runs I’ll do for Ironman – a 32km effort – and based it purely on not exceeding the 70% (130bpm) heart rate that the aeroscan outlined. This kept it steady but, most surprisingly of all was that, by the end I felt pretty good. My legs were getting a little bit sore (I’d been running on hard paving rather than kinder trails or tarmac so this was to be expected) and I was thirsty (I’d kept hydration and nutrition down to pretty minimal levels) but still felt better than I’d expect to after this sort of training run. Turns out I’d only been running  a little over 6min/km, but the pace is of little importance in this sort of run – by keeping steady and at/under the magic number, I’d felt none of the usual peaks/troughs I’d have expected to feel during that sort of run and, to boot, I recovered really quickly too, ready to train the next day.

The acid test, of course, will come on Ironman race day. Can this training be turned into a goal time over 140.6 miles?