My selfie from Thursday-morning’s V02 test. 🙂 OMG that was awful, putting me on a treadmill. I asked them, please, put me on the bike. Nope. They said you can’t get a hard enough workout. Idiots. Extremely-frustrating experience, because seriously, I am not good on my feet.
No mask either; I got to breathe through a scuba-type mouthpiece (plus nose clamp).
The test involves stepping up effort to exhaustion. The problem, for me, is that I simply can’t run that fast. I’m hearing and feeling my feet pounding, hard, on the belt. It’s not fun. You’re not in control of anything, like you’d be on an ergobike, where you can change your cadence.
You can’t see your heart rate, and the experience was so unpleasant that it was my feet that took me out of the game. I pushed as much as I could but at some point was in fear of the lack of control and whether it was about to speed up more. I did manage to get to the point where my breathing and “cadence” were sync’d and there was noplace left to go. I asked afterward if my heart rate had gotten above 160, and for how long. Yes, but only for a minute, at the end.
I would love to do another test, on a real bike, and see how I’d do. I am always suspicious of “tests” that, I think, are influenced by talent or pain tolerance. Like a plank test. I have *zero* core strength, but I do well on a plank test because I have a high tolerance for pain.
Forgot perhaps the most-annoying thing. At the end of the test, they have a list of reasons why you concluded it. Such things as, legs hurt, ran out of breath, overall exhaustion, stuff like that. No option for “thought I’d fly off the treadmill.” There’s an assumption that treadmill “speed” = physical workout. No thought given to someone who is simply too clumsy to run quickly. Maybe they could have simply increased the tilt? Such thoughts went through my mind at the time, but you can only give hand signals when you’re gripping a breathing tube with your mouth.
