According to my Garmin I crossed a pretty significant milestone today that I have been working towards for a while. It isn’t a distance or a time sort of milestone, it is a measure of my health. Today I crossed the line between Good and Excellent in terms of my aerobic fitness with a VO2 Max estimate of 52 mL/kg/min. For anyone reading this who isn’t a health and fitness nerd like me, VO2 Max is a measure of how efficiently your body makes use of oxygen. The higher the number, the more oxygen your blood is able to carry through your body and, presumably, the less effort it takes your heart to keep you going. According to the Garmin Connect website, an average VO2 Max for someone of my age and gender is 43.9.
I had been holding steady at 51 mL/kg/min for probably the past month. I’ve been slacking a bit on my speed training so I wasn’t expecting to make the leap anytime soon. However, today as I set out running in the rain I felt fatigued and the thought of going a full 10K was less than appealing. I opted instead for an easy day running between 6 and 7 K. At my eventual 3.5 K turnaround point I spun around on the road and off of the trail at Burnaby Lake popped another runner. A woman probably around my age… and she was moving. Now, I don’t like to think of myself as a competitive runner. I like running because it is a sport where people encourage each other, not try to crush each other. That being said, I do have a competitive streak in me and when I saw her hop onto the road I decided that if I wasn’t going to run a full 10K, I could at least try to keep pace or pass this total stranger. With that, I kicked into a higher gear.
The last half of my run was run at what is probably the max speed I can manage over any kind of significant distance (4:20 to 4:30/km). I managed to pass the other runner (we exchanged friendly good morning’s) and did my best to build a lead and hold it until I was back home. The effect was that I turned my easy, short run into an impromptu speed day. Speed days are when you push your VO2 Max and that is how I ended up reaching my goal. So, to whoever the runner was who hopped onto the Central Valley Greenway at Burnaby Lake around 10:20 this morning, thank you. You motivated me to push myself and I am a better runner for it.
Yelling at the Moon 