The Fitness Test Deuce

I freely acknowledge that my training habits, or lack of, are a bit shall we say unorthodox.  Some might say weird, but they are usually the ones who are staying up way to late at night pouring over wattage results instead of old Steve McQueen movies.  They are usually drinking energy/protein concoctions, instead of the good Belgian Ales…Ahhh the Trappists, it’s good beer dontchaknow.  And back to training, right now I don’t ride so much. I dream about riding. I miss my bicycles that stare at me from across the room.  Two weeks ago I spent 10 minutes on the trainer, I hate that thing.  In short, for training, I ride.  So in order for me to further train myself into the pages of history I got a heart rate monitor.   This thing is like the mack daddy of heart rate monitors.  You can’t believe all the functions this thing has…I still don’t.  The book that this thing came with was daunting.  It is the kind of book that usually is hardbound and has the word ‘text’ in front of it.  The one function that immediately stood out for me was the ‘Fitness Test’.  The fitness test is a function that allows the user to thoeretically test the level of ones fitness a.k.a the VO2max…haha, who would have guessed.  While wandering around the house with my heart rate strap on, and the watch, and a beer, an idea occured.  Or rather hatched, shall we say.  A fitness test should check how hard the body is working at a given moment, correct.  I think so.  As it is a fitness test, one must be engaged in some sort of bodily exertion for any of the results to be worth collecting.  I figured that some of my hardest work is not done in the sprints to the finish, butt in the sprints to finish.  As I was roasting up a devil inside I knew immediately where my best fitness test was to come from.   Not from on the bike after miles and miles about to crest the last hill with the finish line in sight and a small group of chasers trying to spoil your solo mission to glory.   No, the best, most relevant test was to come from a real life activity, we’re talking everyday people, or at least every other day.  On the bowl, a solo mission with no finish line in sight, nor anything cresting just yet.  Those are the real world conditions that one must endure to take their game to the next level.  Dedication.  As I sat down I knew that I was in for a whopper.  An intense workout proved that my vo2 max is 97 or there abouts.  These heart rate monitors are so advanced they almost seem to bypass reality and go straight into technilogical irrelevance.  So there you have it, this proves that I am indeed ready to tackle the ProTour.  Team High Road here I come, and if that fails, I’ll give Michael Ball a try and see if I can’t help Tyler Hamilton win the Tour de Georgia.

I  am grumpy and I need the weather to change so that I can ride.  As this proves, I have not been riding anywhere near enough.  And I think this also proves that I might need to go seek professional help…a coach.  Clearly my training techniques need a little refining.