Fitness
Hrrmph, just as I get back into this running lark, I get lurgified. Had a lovely morning cocktail today of fizzy vitamins** + echinacea extract + Beechams powders and hope to be reasonably presentable again by Sunday for mile 17 duties supporting fellow Runners World forumites who are doing the London Marathon.
**ASDA had a special half-price offer on fizzy vits for the over-50s. First over-50 product I've ever bought. Gulp! I'm on the slippery slope now, it will be Saga coach tours and prunes for breakfast next!
On the other hand, my new heart rate monitor came today. I bought a Cardiosport model a year ago, but it has been a disaster, so I decided to have one last attempt after hearing that Gaiam were doing very cheap deals on Polar monitors. Bought myself an F11, which was reduced from £99 to £49 inc. postage. It works beautifully and the fact the electrodes are soft and incorporated into a fabric belt means that I am actually getting consistent readings, which never happened with the first monitor. It is quite an advanced little beast and can calculate out a training schedule based on heart rate. I entered in all my data: age, weight, height, gender, amount of exercise per week, and then proceeded to the fitness test. In effect, this measures your resting heart rate and then calculates out your VO2max, a measure of aerobic fitness. Well, I got a score of 49 and it told me I was Elite. There is a comparison table in the manual. For my age (52), an Elite score is anything over 36, while a Very Low score is less than 19. So I looked further down the table at the scores for mere striplings. A score of more than 46 is an Elite score for a 30-34 year-old. A score of 45-49 is Very Good (next down from Elite) for a 25-29-year-old and a score of 47-51 is Very Good for a 20-24-year-old. So even testing myself during a lurgy, which probably has raised my heart rate a bit, I am doing better than most 20-somethings.
*PREEN*
So now the vexed question arises: why the heck can't I run longer and faster than I do?????
**ASDA had a special half-price offer on fizzy vits for the over-50s. First over-50 product I've ever bought. Gulp! I'm on the slippery slope now, it will be Saga coach tours and prunes for breakfast next!
On the other hand, my new heart rate monitor came today. I bought a Cardiosport model a year ago, but it has been a disaster, so I decided to have one last attempt after hearing that Gaiam were doing very cheap deals on Polar monitors. Bought myself an F11, which was reduced from £99 to £49 inc. postage. It works beautifully and the fact the electrodes are soft and incorporated into a fabric belt means that I am actually getting consistent readings, which never happened with the first monitor. It is quite an advanced little beast and can calculate out a training schedule based on heart rate. I entered in all my data: age, weight, height, gender, amount of exercise per week, and then proceeded to the fitness test. In effect, this measures your resting heart rate and then calculates out your VO2max, a measure of aerobic fitness. Well, I got a score of 49 and it told me I was Elite. There is a comparison table in the manual. For my age (52), an Elite score is anything over 36, while a Very Low score is less than 19. So I looked further down the table at the scores for mere striplings. A score of more than 46 is an Elite score for a 30-34 year-old. A score of 45-49 is Very Good (next down from Elite) for a 25-29-year-old and a score of 47-51 is Very Good for a 20-24-year-old. So even testing myself during a lurgy, which probably has raised my heart rate a bit, I am doing better than most 20-somethings.
*PREEN*
So now the vexed question arises: why the heck can't I run longer and faster than I do?????