Post 62 - Testing, coconuts, Guinness

My commute to work has become a whole lot worse, as they have decided to partially close the main station my train passes through, as part of a rebuilding process. It’ll re-open sometime in 2018 or 2019. I’ll be long gone by then. So, for now, this means that my trains are absolutely full to bursting. It’s no fun. People can’t get on or off, so they bang the windows in frustration and desperation. It also means that the trains are running a lot slower than usual, with more frequent delays and cancellations. So my already limited time has become just a bit more limited. Another challenge to overcome. Something to look forward to is the day when I will be able to cycle to work in a clean environment, a long way from London. But anyway.


I got through the week but not without the usual trials, tribulations, and issues to manage and overcome. By the time I get home from work on Thursdays, the working week is almost done. I work longer days during the week, so I don’t quite work a full day on Friday. I’d say by Thursday night, about 85-90% of my working hours for the week are done. But my training week still has a long way to go. By Thursday I’ll have done an hour of hard cycling on the turbo, usually followed by a short run, and also a 5-mile fartlek run. Plus all the stretching, weights and core work. Before I start training on Thursday evening, I still have the following ahead of me in the week: A tough interval turbo session followed by a run, swim sprints, single leg bike drills, a long bike ride followed by a run, a swim drill session, a long run, and all the stretching, weights and core work. Tough weeks! And always a bit of a mental challenge to know that the working week is almost done, but the training week still has a long way to go.

2-week block done

 

I’d been eating coconut oil over Christmas. My brothers eat it, and I’d pinched some almost every day, with no adverse effects. It’s meant to be very good for you. Coconuts are apparently a super-food, so I’d been thinking about introducing coconut oil and coconut water into my diet. On Wednesday at lunchtime I bought a litre of coconut water, and drank about 400ml of it. A colleague at work, who also does triathlons, saw it on my desk, and exclaimed, “What are you doing, drinking that?! It’ll just make you shit!” But I felt fine. I got home from work, trained, and after 5 miles of running and nearly an hour of weights and stretching, I was very hungry. But I couldn’t eat immediately, as although I had pasta and vegetables ready in the fridge, I had to cook some turkey. So I had a spoonful of coconut oil while I was waiting.

In the 30 minutes of waiting for the turkey to cook, my stomach started to tie itself in knots. When my dinner was ready, I was almost doubled over in pain. I could hardly eat – very abnormal for me. I left half my dinner and thought, “This could be a long night…” I had an emergency toilet stop before bed. Not pretty. Spray-painting comes to mind. I went to bed and hoped for the best. Literally 2 minutes later I was bathroom-bound again. Not pretty. It felt like food poisoning, except I wasn’t vomiting. After a third trip to the bathroom, which left me with zero liquid and zero nutrients inside my body, I went to bed and stayed in bed. I knew I had a VO2 max test coming up soon, and wanted to be strong going into it. I was anything but. I was freezing, dehydrated, de-electrolyted, and de-nutritioned. I felt awful. I didn’t have much sleep, but thankfully had no more bathroom trips. And that was the end of it. Next day at work, I drank a lot of electrolyte drink to try to replenish.

I tried to work out what had caused it. It must have been the coconut oil. I didn’t do anything else out of the ordinary. But I could hardly believe that one spoonful of innocuous-looking white stuff could cause so much damage. Taking it on an empty stomach was probably my error. Lesson learned… 

Innocuous but deadly

My VO2 max test was on Friday. There is a study going on a the minute, being backed by the British Heart Foundation, looking at the effects on the heart of prolonged, intense, endurance training and racing. This is something I’m interested in, and something I had begun to think seriously about while I was in hospital last year. Is prolonged high-level Ironman training and racing really good for long-term health (from many points of view including the heart and joints)? Is it good to have such an elevated heart rate for the 9 or 10 (or 17) hours it can take to complete an Ironman?

I had a raft of tests done on my heart last year, all of which concluded that my heart was fine and within normal limits. Late last year, I happened across an email that was looking for endurance athletes to volunteer for a heart study. I seemed to fit the bill, I was interested in being tested again, I was keen to find out my VO2 max, and also keen to help the doctors in their research, as I think it’s an interesting topic. So I sent off an email, and found myself heading for St George’s hospital, having been accepted as a guinea pig.

The idea is that a number of people will be tested, including young, middle-aged, and older athletes, and also less fit people. All the data will be analysed, and a report published. Having talked with one of the doctors, so far they have found a trend that there is some evidence of greater scarring of the heart muscle in older endurance athletes. Hmmm. I don’t intend doing Ironmans when I’m 50, and I have no aspirations to run 100 or 200 marathons like some of the people who had been tested, so hopefully I’ll be OK.

After a good chat with the doctor, where my inquisitive nature saw me ask lots and lots of questions, testing started with an ultrasound scan of my heart. This really does make you realise just how amazing the heart is, when you can see it on a screen, beating away. The 4 chambers were all easy to see, all pulsing to my own internal rhythm of 40-45 beats per minute at rest. The valves between chambers were opening and closing metronomically. Sound enhancement allowed me to hear the whooshing of the blood as it filled the chambers and was pumped out and around my body, transporting the things that keep me alive and well. All the while, pumping and pumping, 24 hours a day, for an entire lifetime, hopefully without as much as a single problem. Amazing. And absolutely worth taking care of.

A comprehensive ECG (electrocardiogram) followed, where I was hooked up to loads of electrodes. They went on my back, on my neck, on my chest, and even on my legs. I was told to lie back and get comfortable, and that it would take about 5 minutes. The doctor really stressed how important it was to be as relaxed as possible. He even turned the lights off. But he couldn’t get a reading on the machine. My feet were hanging off the end of the bed, and he said this might be having an effect, so I shuffled up the bed. Still no signal. He had a look at the electrodes on my chest. I don’t have a very hairy chest, but one was stuck to some hair. “Ahhhhh”, the doctor said, and whipped it off. “AAAHHHHHHH”, I yelped. He replaced it.

Wired up

Finally, the machine started picking up a full signal from all the electrodes, and 5 minutes later, the doctor approached me. “Don’t worry,” he said, seeing me recoil. “We’ll keep the electrodes on until after your bike test. They are easier to take off when you are sweaty…” Then I got measured and learned that I am 186cm tall rather than 184 as I previously thought. I got weighed too and was 68kg. That is pretty light, considering it’s so early in the season.

Then it was onto the exercise bike. I had brought my own pedals, spanner, allen keys, cycling shoes, bike set-up measurements and tape measure to ensure that I was riding in the correct position, with proper cycling shoes. There were two reasons for this: one was to try to avoid injury, and one was to try to maximise my performance. Anyway, it turned out that I ended up just using the toe-clip pedals that came with the bike, and my trainers. The bike was really basic, and the pedals were much wider apart than on a normal road bike, making the riding position seem a bit like something Kermit the frog would adopt. The seat didn’t move fore and aft either, so it would have been impossible to get a good position using my own pedals and cleats, as I couldn’t then have moved my feet back and forwards on the pedals.

I fiddled about with the bike for a while, and got myself into a reasonably good position. I asked about VO2 max values. It’s basically a measure of how much oxygen your body can use, measured in millilitres per minute per kilogram of bodyweight. The higher the value, the greater the body’s capacity to use oxygen, and therefore the greater the fitness potential. There is some debate about how “inherent” it is. Some people are born with high VO2 max capacities. Training can improve it, but not a huge amount. The record is held by a Norwegian cross-country skier, at 98. Tour de France rider Chris Froome comes in at 96. These are freakishly high values, and when combined with perfect training, nutrition, recovery and hydration, you get world-class athletes. The average for people of my age is 47. I hoped to have a value of about 70. Good Ironman age-group athletes typically have values of 50-70.

Then I got all the “gear” put on by the doctor: the blood pressure monitor, electrodes, wires, and face mask. So both myself and the bike were now wired into the computer. I started warming up, and as I did so, the doctor explained what would happen. I was to pedal at 80-90rpm, and the computer would increase the resistance at a rate of 6 watts every 12 seconds. I was to go for as long as I could. A quick mental calculation told me that 15 minutes would have me pedalling at 450 watts. I thought this should be possible, but I knew I hadn’t been well earlier in the week and was still a bit depleted. Plus I was a bit worried about hammering myself on a bike that didn’t fit perfectly. I didn’t want to hurt my knees, or anything else.

 

On the bike

The test started. I was spinning air. It was easy. My heart rate was on the screen in front of me. 60 bpm. I thought this was meant to be difficult?! I could see the wattage. 6 more watts every 12 seconds. I got to 200 watts and it was still easy. 300 watts came, and the doctor then started getting vocal. It’s in his interests for me to go as long as possible. “Come on, dig deep,” he said. But I was still comfortable. My heart rate was something like 160. I held 160 for 4 hours last year. But I knew once I hit 180, I wouldn’t have much left. Every 6 watts now made a big difference. Breathing hard. 170bpm. “Keep going John!” Hammer time. 175bpm. Well over 400 watts, but I could no longer see the screen as I was working so hard. My heart rate hit 180. Every 12 seconds it got 6 watts tougher, but it felt like a million watts tougher. Finally, my cadence just petered out, and that was it. Test over. I didn’t decide that I couldn’t hack it any more. I just literally could not spin the pedals.
 

Warming down

I recovered quickly, and then had a blood test. The worst part of the day. I hate having blood taken. I looked away, felt the “sharp scratch” inside my elbow (I am sure the doctors are told to say that every time), and about a minute later it was over. Then we discussed my VO2 max results. My value was 63.1ml/min/kg. I thought I’d be a bit higher than this, but I’m sure the depletion after the diarrhoea just 2 days previously didn’t help. Neither did my lack of tapering, and I was also at the end of a two-week training block, with fatigue in my legs. My heart rate maxed out at 184bpm. I thought it would hit about 187 or 188, but my legs said no before my cardio system did.

My lactate threshold was even more surprising. This is the point where the body stops working aerobically and starts working anaerobically, with the associated build-up of lactic acid. My lactate threshold was only at 125 beats per minute. I expected it to be much higher. But this relatively low value is indicative that I am early in the season, and arguably at my most unfit. I haven’t done much high-intensity work in the last few months, but will be building this up. Lactate threshold can change with training much more than VO2 max can. The doctor and I ended up discussing my 100 mile time trial last year, where I held and average of 162bpm for 4 hours. I asked him what he thought I had maintained for the 4 hours, he guessed 145-150. So I think my lactate threshold will be a lot higher in the summer, and the doctor offered to repeat the test. I’ll be very interested to compare results. I left hospital with a 24-hour heart monitor attached - more wires, a recording box, probable sleep disruption, and no showering for 24 hours...

There is another set of tests next weekend, one of which is a cardiac MRI scan. I don’t mind being put into a claustrophobic tube for an hour or two, but I do mind having a line put into my vein, and I do mind being flushed with dye. So, I’ve got that to look forward to next week…

On Friday night, I was out for dinner. I had a steak burger, chips, a pint of Guinness, and a banoffee pie. My discipline went down the pan, for one night only. I have to say it was very nice, but given my coconut problems, my VO2 max test, my steak burger, Guinness, dessert, poor sleeping, and given that I was at the end of my first two-week training cycle and was fatigued, didn’t expect much from training on Saturday and Sunday.  

As it turned out, on the turbo on Saturday I felt great. On the run that followed, I was bouncing. In the pool the next day, I was zooming. And on my longer hilly run, I felt I had good strength. I had no right to feel so good, but for some reason, I did. Maybe Guinness is the answer… or coconut oil? Or steak burgers? Or banoffee pie? It reminded me of summer 2006 in France. I used to run regularly when I was working in the Pyrenees. My final mile before I got to my accommodation was a steep, steep uphill mile. I used to always run this as hard as I could. The fastest I ever ran it was the morning after I had been out with all the staff and had drank a few beers. I’d even say I was a bit hung over. I had no reason to run well. And yet I blitzed that final mile, it was the fastest I ran it all summer. Maybe I’ll load my bike up with booze at Ironman UK…!

Training done this week was as follows:

Monday 12^th January: Rest
Tuesday 13^th January: 1 hour turbo (50 minutes hard)
Wed 14^th January: 30 minute fartlek run
Thurs 15^th January: 1:05 turbo (15 x 2 mins hard, 2 mins easy)
Friday 16^th January: Swim 1.6km easy (1500m in 25:09), 30 minute bike (VO2 max test)
Saturday 17^th January: 2:20 turbo, 25 minute run
Sunday 18^th January: Swim 3.2km, 60 minute run (9 hills)

Totals: Swim 4.8km, Bike 110 miles, Run 18 miles