July 29, 2008

More hills!?

So I had my treadmill stress test this afternoon. Not sure when I will get the results (as interpreted by the doctor) but the technicians seemed to think everything was OK.

I didn't do all that well on the treadmill. I was told the test would take about an hour, so I had visions of them steadily increasing the speed until I couldn't take it. I was hoping I could get up to a respectable speed before sending up the white flag.

It turns out there is a particular program they use called the Bruce protocol. You start out slow, but at a 10% grade. The speed and grade increase every 3 minutes. Well after running up hills this week during the Ragnar Relay, my calves were pretty smoked. There are 10 stages in the protocol, and I barely made it into stage 4. There was a false start because the treadmill didn't adjust until minute 5 the first time around, so I had to lie down then start over with it adjusted to 3 minutes.

I think they recorded enough information, but it was a little deflating to make it only 12 minutes or so. Poor scheduling to have it a couple days after the relay. At least that's my story.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I so feel your pain. You are probably right, not the time to schedule that.
I went for a few miles last night myself and thought someone had filled my legs with cement.
Keep us updated with results, please.