The Rain Against My Window

I can’t stand the rain, against my window, bring back sweet memories.

As it never seems to stop raining long enough for anything but the shortest of bouldering sessions, I decided I may as well test my aerobic threshold (AeT) and lactate threshold (LT). Technically, you need to pay many dollars for this and go into a laboratory and get hooked up to gas exchange machines, but as I am not now, and never will be, a world class athlete that seems like overkill.

It is possible to do it yourself (DIY) lactate threshold and aerobic threshold testing. The beauty of DIY testing, apart from being outdoors in nature and costing no money at all (as long as you have a heart rate monitor) is that you can retest multiple times to track your progress.

In all likelihood, I thought I would have aerobic deficiency syndrome (ADS) - defined by Johnston, House and Jornet in their book “Training For The Uphill Athlete” as a greater than 10% spread between AeT and LT - but, heck, you never, know. Perhaps like the greatest in the world, my AeT would bump right up against my LT.

In truth, it is a long time since I have done any threshold training and was not sure how well I would be able to judge pace, but, it was no problem and after 30 minutes of threshold training I worked out why people so often train at threshold almost all the time. Threshold is a pace that feels good and leaves you with a pleasant buzz afterwards. Much more fulfilling than the long slow aerobic shuffle that builds a base.

And then the wind came. Close to 50 knots out at Montague Island and the wave rider buoy off north head peaked at a dizzying 10 metres. Funny to think we have paddled out to the buoy a couple of times and laid our hands on the side.