Anaerobic Wingate Test

Eric • 5th Mar 2008 • Fitness

This morning I went to UB again for the 2nd day of VO2 Max testing. Today was much easier – warm-up on a bike, then pedal “like a bat out of hell” (they use such scientific terms) up to about 170rpm. Then they press a button and 5.7kg of resistance is added to the wheel. All of this data is recorded on a computer, and they see how quickly my heart rate goes up and I come to exhaustion. After that was 4 minutes of cool-down where they watched my heart rate come back down. So aside from warm-up and cool-down, it was a 30 second test today.

They did confirm that I’m the oldest participant in their study, but I also have one of the highest VO2 Max readings of the group. So even though I’m old, I know how to breathe efficiently.

Friday I go back, when I’ll get to ride the bike as long as I can while keeping up a pace of 70 rpm. They say it can be 15-25 minutes. I’m a bit nervous about this one.