A variety of authors are emphasizing most cardio oxygen consumption (VO2max) as being essential for wholesome getting old, so I believed I’d look into testing it. It’s costly to have executed professionally, however there are a number of self-tests accessible. I needed a biking one, and remembered there was one within the e-book Aerobics Program For Whole Properly-Being written by Dr. Kenneth Cooper (typically known as the “father of aerobics”) again in 1982, nonetheless accessible. Dr. Cooper turned 93 this 12 months and is himself an excellent commercial for wholesome getting old. He developed a 12 minute aerobics check for operating initially, however on this e-book additionally gave tables for swimming and biking.
Dr Cooper used knowledge from numerous topics of varied ages to correlate the outcomes of those checks to V02max. You too can simply evaluate your outcomes on the checks to his tables, which have classes “very poor” by way of “wonderful”. Sadly, the information stops on the “60+” class, however by plotting the outcomes and extrapolating, I estimated that to be within the wonderful class for biking at 70+, males have to realize a distance of larger than 3.5 miles in 12 minutes (equal to common velocity of over 17.5 mph). For people who don’t have the e-book, the biking outcomes are additionally right here and in addition proven beneath.
So I created a close-by flat loop, which is now on Strava as “Cooper TT North” (it’s a bit north of Morgan Hill, between Hale and Dougherty avenues), proven right here. I did this as a part of my journey yesterday morning, and coated the three.89 mile loop in 13:14, for a median velocity of 17.63 mph, which is equal to protecting 3.5 miles in 11.9 minutes). So primarily based on my estimate, I’m within the wonderful class for age 70+ (and in the course of the “good” class for 60+). That feels fairly good!
Dr, Cooper didn’t specify bike place in his e-book, however aerobars weren’t extensively accessible within the early 80s, so I figured my higher-speed arrange on my recumbent, with a extremely reclined seat (at the very least as aero as an upright time trial bike with aerobars), is perhaps dishonest a bit in comparison with the information within the checks. So I used low rolling resistance tires however the extra upright “touring” seating place of my bike. I’ll repeat this check about as soon as a month and hopefully be capable to enhance for some time, and at the very least hold my outcomes from degrading too rapidly over time.
Listed here are the tables for the Cooper bike check:
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