“Keep it up! Looking good! You can do it. Just a few minutes to go”. Words of encouragement from fit 20 year olds to a slightly overweight, shirtless, middle-aged man running up a 15 degree incline at 5 mph, drenched in sweat and cursing the moment when he signed up to be one of 200 participants in an exercise research study . “Lift your finger when you are on the brink of total exhaustion but have one minute left in the tank”. Now picture this. I’m on a treadmill having a maximal aerobic fitness test (VO2max) measured by these mad scientists. I’ve been at this for nine minutes. My lungs are bursting, my legs are burning but I must continue to exhaustion for the sake of science and family honor since my daughter is a member of the faculty running the study. I raise my index finger to alert my youthful tormentors to prepare for my final minute of torture and give ‘er!
“Great job. Way to hang in there” said the study leader as the treadmill came to a halt. I was ushered into a dark room for 30 minutes of blood pressure readings taken at increasing intervals. “We got great results” she said, and then proceeded to summarize my statistics. “You are a 55 year old male, 207 lbs, 5’ 10” tall, moderately active. Your VO2 max is 37.3, which is in the 67th percentile for a man in the 50 to 59 age range”. I was somewhat surprised with this result and planned to celebrate with a burger and beer. That’s when I heard it from my daughter. “Dad, you can do much better. You can increase your VO2 max by regular exercise and losing weight.” I’d like to believe that her encouragement came from a genuine concern for her dear old dad’s health and wellbeing. But I sensed an underlying subtext of “Hey get your act together because I don’t want to wheel your sickly animated carcass around the mall a few years from now.”
Now I’m not exactly a stranger to exercise. I have a nice road bike that I ride on pleasant weekends. I’m a recreational swimmer and have been known to run 5 km or so. But consistency has always been an issue. I’ve made plenty of excuses to avoid regular exercise. My back or knees hurt. I’m too busy with work. It’s too cold or hot. The dog ate my running shoes. My daughter offered to re-measure my VO2 max in the summer if just I set a goal to exercise and improve my diet. The challenge was thrown down. I felt no choice but to accept. My goal is to drop my weight to below 190 lbs and complete a sprint triathlon in 90 minutes by the end of June. Is this too ambitious? It remains to be seen, but in the words of the Special Air Service commandos “who dares wins”. I’ll keep you posted with this #DadBlog.