Physical Testing

The last two days we've been doing some testing in Park City, UT, at the Ski Team's Center of Excellence, aka central office and mega - high tech gym.  Yesterday we, as in the National Training Group, spent the day at the COE - from breakfast at 8 in the morning until we finished the last test, hemoglobin levels, around 4 p.m.  Fortunately they have a nutritionist on staff and there's always plenty of healthy food - with a spread of cereals, granola, fresh fruit, yogurt and bagels in the morning, and fresh baked ham and turkey for lunch-meat.  

We did a variety of strength tests on the force plate yesterday a.m.  After the basic vertical jump test, (which is measured by a force plate) we worked our way up higher and higher boxes.  For the last vertical jump we came down from a 125cm box to the force plate.  

Dual treadmills.

In the afternoons we got onto the rollerski treadmill - which is definitely one of the coolest machines that they have.  (I should say rollerski treadmills - although the one on the right is apparently older than me and too finicky to use for testing).  Yesterday we did lactate testing by increasing the speed at every two minutes, and stopping to get our finger's pricked to test our blood's lactate content between each increase. They were also measuring our VO2 and heart rate, so we'll have really good training zones established after we get our results back.  

This first test ended at about race pace - just before it got really tough.  Today, however, we did max VO2 testing - and went until we couldn't. They set the speed at a constant 7 miles per hour, and then increased the incline on the machine every minute.  It wasn't too bad because the test only took about 10 minutes once we got warmed up.   However, having to breathe in and out of a tube is tricky.

Me - with a lovely attachment.

Cliff Field pushing through.

Fortunately we wore a harness for the max test - because I ended with a missed pole plant and "swung" back towards the end of the treadmill.  Without the harness - I probably would have crashed off and into the stationary bikes behind the machine in a bad way. 

After the test they pricked my finger for a few more bood tests, and then 

I'm excited to go through the results tomorrow.  I'm sure I'll see specific places for improvement, and we'll get a good baseline to compare to in a few months, and over the years to come.

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