running study baseline stuff

Last Wednesday, I went in to get all the baselines done for the running study I'm participating in. They did height, weight, body fat, and VO2max. I would've posted sooner, but I've been hanging out with some family that has been in town from out of state. Anyway, I wasn't able to get any pictures...oh well, I'll find some.

I'm not going to share my weight and body fat because I don't want to, but I will tell you that you would be surprised by my body fat percentage.  I'm over 5 ft tall!! Seriously, I swear!! Anyway, healthy body fat percentage for females is between 11 and 30%. It's common for female athletes to be at the lower end of that range, especially runners. To check our body fat percentage, they used a bod pod. You sit in it, and it uses air pressure or something to figure out your body fat percentage. (I hope nobody was claustrophobic!)

bod pod

Now for VO2 max testing, Josh called it "the torture machine" mainly because of the mask we had to wear. We also had to wear a heart rate monitor. I didn't think the mask was that bad. It was definitely weird and uncomfortable at first, but after a couple of minutes I was fine with it.

 We started out by walking on a treadmill (with the mask and heart rate monitor on), and every 3 minutes we went into a "new stage". With each stage, the speed and the incline increased on the treadmill. It was really tough, but I wouldn't call it torture. For the testing, you go until you can't go anymore, and when you grab the handles on the treadmill....you're done. I was able to go a little over 16 minutes. Josh made it about 19 minutes or something like that. Here's a video of someone doing VO2 max testing...

They told me that my VO2 max is 58. What does that mean?? That means I'm super athletic according to the chart. I seriously haven't been running much lately. I run maybe 1or 2 times a week (maybe), so getting 58 while being out of shape was pretty sweet!

this is the exact chart they gave us (ignore the highlighting)

As you can see by this chart, being a girl and getting 58 for my VO2 max....I'm almost olympic! haha.  If I was a 50 yr old male, i would be olympic. haha.

They'll use our VO2 max to determine our speed for the 2 hr treadmill run that we'll have to do in July. Our speed will be 75% of our VO2 max....whatever that means.  I guess I better start running more so that I can run for 2 hrs.