Thursday, February 01, 2007

To Hell and Back

Hell...that is the word that best described it. I was beaten down and forced to pull out of my first time trial test with Mike at UVIC yesterday. Let me explain:

After getting my initial weight and blood taken i sat down and drank 1L of a unknown solution, tasted gross, but either was Sodium Citrate at 1%, 2% or Gatorade. Then got hooked up with wires like you wouldn't believe. Going in and out of places you don't even wanna know!

Waited another 45 mins and then more blood taken. THen i got suited up and shoes on and marched into the death chamber to start the test. He has a sort of greenhouse that the bike is set up in and regulated to 42C on the humidix. After getting only a 5min warmup (protocol) the test starts. The bike is programmed based on your VO2max test done previously, but i felt it was geared to hard and my cadence felt slow. You have no preception of anything in there. Don't know your time, your cadence, power, nothing, only a signal at 1/4, 1/2 etc. Your only real campanion is the bloody heat.

Water comes every so often but it is just a teaser amount and causes you to wish for more. Anyways i started to feel the hurt coming on about a quarter of the way thru. When i heard 1/2 way i felt like i had just been shot. ONLY HALF WAY!! Things really went south from there i was sweating like a mofo and was getting fatigued. I really don't remember much after half way, just the sound of the bike. The plug got pulled on me im guessing about 3/4's of the way cause my core temperature had gotten too high (40C).

I was dissappointed i didn't finish it. But mike can still use the data. Two more to go, and next time I'm taking this sucka down...

I'll try and get a pic of hell for everyone.

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