Testing for My Great Fitness

I’ve spent some time tooling for a way to asses my fitness so that I can set goals for myself. I doubt there is a definitive test, so I kind of just picked one that looked interesting and went with it.

This one was compiled by Men’s Health. It is all in Imperial, because, you know, the whole world (USA, Liberia, Burma) uses Imperial standard, so I had to convert it for us outlier countries (South Africa, England, India, Korea, Bra... You know what? Just pick a country other than USA, Liberia or Burma.)
With adjustments that likely makes things more difficult for running, I set myself these goals:

• Run 300m in under 60 seconds
  
• Run 2.5 km in under 10 minutes.
  
• Leg-Press 2,25 times your body weight.
  
• Jump up 65cm.
  
• Bench Press 1.5 time your body weight.
  
• Do 40 Push-Ups.
  
• Throw a Basketball 22m while kneeling.
  
• Swim 650m in under 12 minutes.
  
• Have a hip to waist ratio of 0.81
  
• 10 Pull-ups (I’m adding this)

Early this morning I went to see what I could do about the first two. In school I was able to do a 400m in 54 seconds and a 100m in 11.2 seconds. 54s on a 400m is just under 14 seconds per 100m. I know I’m much older and not nearly as fit, but surely I can do 20 seconds per 100m, right?

I prepared for the test with a relaxed but fast 400m jog to warm up. Some rotations of various joints and a light stretch here and there to feel more relaxed and then the real warm up started. 100m at about 60%, another at about 70% and one more at about 85%. I didn't feel the need to do more as I was not going to test my muscles with the full force of a 100m sprint.

Why so little stretching? Research shows that for the vast majority of activities, stretching before said activity is more likely to cause injury than prevent it. Most people are as flexible as they need to be already, but even so, stretching after training is a good thing.

I was wearing my heart rate monitor, so while making my way over to the 300m mark I was keeping an eye on the numbers to make sure I was well rested before I started. Turns out it takes a long time for my HR to drop below 120bpm.

Unfortunately I don't have a watch with a stopwatch on it, so I had to use my phone. This meant I needed to unlock the thing before I could stop the clock. Turns out that takes about 5 seconds then you are trying to do it while slowing down.

I started the 300m run feeling OK, but I very quickly realised I was pushing too hard. One big problem with running this distance at speed is that it is oh so easy to go too fast. It takes practice to know what your body is capable of and keeping output within those limits. Since this is an anaerobic activity, when you start too fast you just know you will reach the end with your glutes screaming at you and your quads going on strike.

No prizes for guessing what happened to me. By about 100m I knew I was not going to finish nearly the way I started and with 50m to go I was already mentally screaming at myself to keep moving. With 20m to go I had no rhythm and nearly stumbled.

Despite my legs nearly giving up on me, I managed to get there in time, and I did so comfortably. It’s been a very long time since I pushed so hard on this distance, and I was really happy with the results. I made it in a comfortable 51 seconds (estimated). I should not really be surprised that this was so easy, because this is what I am build for this is what I did for most of my high school life. The other measures will not be so easy. Keep in mind that the MH test says I should be doing 25m less. I’m guessing that is maybe another 4 seconds I can trim immediately.

I was hoping to do the 2.5 km test as well, but the warm up and single 300m took much more out of me that I expected. After 400m of the 2.5 km I knew I was going way too slow . I was fighting my own mind after just 300m, for heaven's sake. This was not going to work and there was no denying it, so I decided to leave the test for another day

At the moment I do 5km (not flat) in 28 minutes. That is about 5:45 per km. Surely I can do 1 km in 5 minutes if I only need to do 2.5 km? The target is 4 minutes, so I’m thinking that if I don’t need to do the whole 300m test before then I can at least make a challenge of this. Maybe I’ll leave this test for next weekend, or maybe sometime this week.