Performance tests, The Forge and religion (again)

Well done to all Family members who competed in the UTMB, and special congratulations to our man from Essex - Mike Mason - for a terrific run!

I went to the University of Lincoln today for some running performance tests as part of the ultra running study being conducted by sports physiologist Paul Murgatroyd. He is trying to see if there is some ultra threshold, a % of VO2 max or some other relative physiological measure known to affect running / aerobic exercise capacity, which might be trainable and directly relate to performance.

Anyway he did 1 test to test my running economy - he was looking for changes in my blood lactate, heart rate and oxygen uptake over a series of increasingly faster 3 minute intervals. He then let me rest for a few minutes then did a VO2 max test where I ran at 13km/hour on an increasingly steep incline. I came out with an average VO2 max (3.81L/min), a max heart rate of 185 bpm and a poor running economy (220 ml/kg/km).

I was initially surprised at having such a poor running economy (which is a meaure of how my body responds to increasing intensity of exercise) but Paul has explained that it is likely because I am trained to a slow race pace just now so when the test was conducted it started at 12km/hr (8 min/miles) and rose to 15km/hr (6:24 min/miles) I struggled with the intensity. I can feel that after 5 ultras so far this year my legs are sluggish and don't have much speed in them. The remedy? More tempo and interval work. I do wonder given that I am running ultras quite well whether there is something more than an aerobic measure which will be influential to performance in ultra races - there has to be something about muscle function but I am no exercise physiologist so don't know.

A few people have asked about the photo at the top of my blog. It is of An Teallach (The Forge), just south of Dundonnel, which is just south of Ullapool. A truly magnificent mountain with some of the wildest, most remote and beautiful land in Scotland. Here is another photo, this time taken from one of the tops, back along the spectacularly sharp ridge. It was taken in 2005 and the chap is my mate John.



Onto religion again, I sit here blogging whilst semi-watching a programme on TV about religion. The programme this time is about how Wahabism (correct spelling?), a relatively hardline interpretation of Islam from Saudi Arabia, is being taught in some UK Mosques. The interpretation is reported as being based on segregration and the drilling home that Muslims owe only allegiance to Allah and no-one, or nothing else. There are some fairly serious and worrying undertones and implications from what is being shown - that UK Muslims are being encouraged not to integrate, and in fact to be slightly duplicitious in their relations with non-Muslim Brits - that is not to form friendships with them and not to speak of what they are being taught. Non-Muslims are given a depersonifying label by the various religious teachers - kaffirs which I thought was a white south african apartheid and derogatory term for black people. The implication is that the teaching is one of Muslim superiority. Not good. Now I realise (hope) that what the programme will not apply to most Muslims but nonetheless it is worrying. To see the hate literally on the faces of some of the people preaching really concerns me. Why such hate? What has happened to them to make them hate so much?

More generally and beyond Islam, I wonder how the institutions of religions prevent such a slide towards extreme views in their adherents? What strategies are employed to ensure that whilst teaching 'the truth' as apparent to adherents of that religion, that such teachings are not corrupted by some into saying that those who do not believe the truth or live their lives according to the truth are somehow bad, evil, lesser etc.? The teaching of absolute truths concerning morals, ethics and the structure of society in terms of inter-personal relationships and values seems to me to be dangerous thing which unavoidably contains a strong potential to slide towards extremism.