Running Isn’t Always Glamorous!

Yesterday I wrote about the study which I’m involved in which will measure my core and body temperature during the Comrades.  I had to do a VO2 Max test in preparation and wanted to fill everyone in on what exactly a VO2 Max test is and how I fared…

You basically have to run on a treadmill which starts off at a leisurely pace of 7km/h and gradually increases by 0.5km/h every minute.  The aim is to keep going until you have reached your maximum effort which is when you jump off of the treadmill.  Now there were a few things which I did not consider and therefore didn’t ask before we started the test, the most important being

How do you jump off a moving treadmill going at about 15km/h???

So I, in my comfortable naïveté, started the whole process – oh don’t let me forget to say that I couldn’t talk because my Oxygen and CO2 levels were also being measured which means I had a mask covering my nose and mouth -  and secretly I was hoping that they would find me to be some kind of sporting prodigy, which is why I’ve managed to do such crazy things in terms of running in such a short period of time

All was well until about 15minutes into the exercise, while I was bolting along at somewhere between 12km/h and 14km/h, I mistakenly looked down and almost shot right off the back of the flipping treadmill…  Sending forth a muffled scream from inside my face mask I managed to grab onto the railing and hop off before I was unceremoniously spat off the back – not something anyone should be trying at home and neither, as it seems, in a carefully monitored state of the art laboratory!!

Luckily I was already running over my maximum (according to the computer) and all the results they had were fine, truth be told I wouldn’t have been able to carry on for much over what I had already done anyway, as most of my regular readers know I’m more of a tortoise than a hare…

Not me but similar to what I looked like