Saturday 18 July 2009

Heavy Breathing

I popped to the hospital last week as I have problems breathing in hot weather and generally suffer from chest tightness. The results of the tests are that I have small airway constriction which is symptomatic of asthma, so I've been issued with a couple of inhalers. My suspicion that there might be a beer can stuck down there was disproved by the xrays. Incidentally the nurse was as impressed by my 11.11 litre lung capacity as I was by her set of lungs - although I didn't get the chance to give them the full test ride and examination.

This does mean that if I enter any major events I will have to get a therapuetic usage exemption for the inhaler because of the admittedly extremely slim chance that the professional piss-testers take an interest. A high profile drug bust a la Ben Johnson is one thing, but it would be pretty embarassing being caught if you were actually quite shit at a sport. You can imagine the headlines: "Drug cheat fails at cheating, returns £1.50 in prize money & race t-shirt".

After a couple of miserable training sessions I was back on form this week, putting in a good Vo2 max sessions of 800's and a quality repetition session of 400's. This is my time of year, short and intense rather than long and drawn out. I have 3 weeks left of VO2 max work and then it's time for the peak period of racing and glory!

Unfortunately I crowned a decent week of training but getting loaded on friday night, an episode which I am still paying for nearly 24 hours later. This is a little disappointing given I abstained for 6 months. If I can just prevent the flood gates from opening for the next month and a half....

2 comments:

  1. Is that right, 11.1 litres? I read that Miguel Indurain, the 5 times tour winner had 8 litres which was considered large.

    Have you considered a switch to cycling?

    Like the blog, v. amusing/interesting exercise. Keep it up.

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  2. I've had it checked twice and it was 11.1 the first time and 10.9 the second. Unfortunately it's not much of an indicator of performance, unlike Vo2 max. I believe Indurain had an extremely high Vo2 max.

    I quite like cycling but only as cross training - it just takes too long for effective training and is miserable in shitty weather.

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