Performance Test at Sportmed Süd
It’s been now a year since I started running on a regular and competitive basis. I have been able to dedicate a good deal of my spare time to an activity which slowly has become an indispensable habit. There are a lot of rewards some obvious and easy to grasp, others are more subtle, slowly oozing into the consciousness. I have talked about them already, so I will not go into too much detail here. After my last marathon in Graz in October 2007, I realised that I have come a long way from my humble beginnings, which most of all revolved around trying to introduce a regular running habit into my daily routine. You might not believe how difficult it actually turned out to be. This difficulty may stem from my past as a soccer player, where activity and running was closely tied to play and a ball. Running for its own sake in this light appears to offer small rewards and little satisfaction. As a matter of fact, I only managed to make running a habit after I had moved from the countryside to the city. At that point I started discovering a whole new universe. Everything that followed, by comparison, was easy . Having scratched on the three hours mark, only hambered by revolting thigh muscles at the Graz marathon, breaking that barrier in a marathon appears to be an obvious goal. I realised that my training still has a lot of potential with regards to optimising my effords. Christian Kleineberg set me up with Georg Ruess, who happens to be one of Austria’s best marathon runners and is kind enough to write training plans for desperate guys like me. As a matter of fact he is the reigning marathon World Masters Champion in his age group. It is amazing how much knowledge and expertise are gathered in his mind, which makes talking to him a course in motivation. 
In order to write efficient training plans, it is necessary to base them on correct data. Thus I did my second performance test this year at Sportmed S�d, Institut f�r Sportmedizin & Sportwissenschaft, run by Dr. med. univ. Horst Grubelnik. I was welcomed by his medical assistants, Waltraud and Renate, who skillfully explained the procedure, took my measures, weight, blood pressure and set me up for the test. The test is done on a treadmill, starting at 6 km/h. After three minutes running at that pace, I had to jump to the side, and Renate aptly took blood from my earlap for the lactate test. After jumping back on the treadmill, the speed was raised by 2 km/h to 8 km/h, at which speed I had to run for another three minutes . This procedure was repeated until I reached my limit after 25.30 minutes and at 19.04 km/h (Oh boy, some guys run a whole marathon faster than this….) . My maximum heart rate turned out to be 201 bpm – a lot higher than I believed it to be – and my anaerobe threshold was determinde at 179 bpm. 
The test was evaluated by Dr. Grubelnik and he explained the results to me in such a way that I could better understand the many curves, graphs and numbers. He was very positive about the test, giving green light for my goals. I have handed on my test results to Georg. His verdict still stands out.
