As I wrote earlier in the week, I got hooked up with some personal training at the gym I joined. In order for them to work with me on the best “base training” plan for this winter as I prepare for my first triathlon in the spring, and to be successful, I had to have a fitness test done. Thursday night, I had it done, and it opened up my eyes.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but when I arrived at the gym, I got weighed (which sucks) and measured. Its good to know that I haven’t lost any height over the years, although I consider myself getting rounder if you know what I mean. She then took my body fat percentage using a machine, which I was a little surprised with. I thought they would use the calipers to calculate it, but they didn’t. Turned out my body fat percentage is 21.1% … which was considered normal for my age group, but almost at the upper limit (average goes to 21.6%). That was wake up call number one…

So then she had me do leg stretches to measure my sitting reach hip flexion .. which wasn’t good at all. I think she was being nice when she said that runners muscles are generally tighter than nonrunners, but somehow it still didn’t make me feel any better when I scored only a 13 which is well below average for my age group. I should be in the 24-29 range. This doesn’t surprise me though because I know for a fact that I don’t stretch well enough.

Next up was a grip strength test and going in I thought, hey, I’ll do great on this one and surprisingly, I did not. I scored an 89 when the average should be around a 104 .. this means that my arm strength isn’t what I think it is. I was at a point by now that I felt quite defeated…. but the test continues.

The next test was a strength test, I chose to do push-ups instead of sit-ups and thought I would do really well since I worked in the spring on doing the 100 push-up challenge, well, I ended up not doing great. I only got 14 in during a 30 second period when I should have been able to do 16 at a minimum to be average… Ugh, what was going on with me????

Last up was something called the “Bruch Submax Treadmill”, which is basically finding your VO2 threshold.. I knew I would hit this one out of the park, and I did. I was significantly above average although the test did suck real bad. I basically ran a mile on the treadmill slowly with an incline, and then she put it up higher and higher and higher until by the end of the mile I was at a 15 incline.. it was hard.

So we talked a little bit about the results and after reviewing them with her, I know the areas I need to work on. Strength training and stretching along with continued cardio.. She’s going to set me up with the right program to get the base strength training while I work on the base training portion for cycling, swimming and running. All I can say is that its going to be a long, hard winter, but i’m up to the challenge.

The most I can say is that the whole fitness test was very humbling experience.. but it does explain some things. I’ve been struggling to lose weight and to be able to push the pace anymore, and it comes down to just not being balanced. In order to complete a triathlon though, I need to be well-rounded in my training, so I have the opportunity to fix it as long as I stick with it…

Well, this is a running blog, so let me comment on the upcoming week. Its taper time, there won’t be any excitement, although I’m looking forward to getting some rest. Its actually a shortened race week with the race being on Saturday, so tomorrow we’ll get a short bike ride in ..

Anyone else ever have one of these done?????? Were you surprised by the result????