Assessment Day (Again)

I wanted to do another fitness assessment before I did this race on April 15th and today was that day.  After work I got a chance to rest at home a bit and then head over to the gym for 6 o’clock and meet with Jodi.  I’ve talked about assessments here before, right, over… Here.

I was a bit surprised at a couple of the things on these results from today, but when I actually brought the numbers home and compared them to the last assessment I was not as surprised as I was at the gym.  Many of the things were the same, or you know, as ‘same’ as any measure of the human body can be since it fluctuates even within each day.

My heart rate at rest is still awesomely low, 40bpm, my blood pressure is fine as usual, I’ve stayed the same height (no surprises there) and even over the last year I weigh about the same (within about 2 pounds).  One thing we did change was how the scale measured my body fat percentage.  Apparently on the scale they have at the gym there are two settings to use for measuring ones body fat percentage, Normal and Athletic.  The athletic setting takes into account the fact that athletic folks do weight training and generally have more muscle mass than non-athletic types.  So while we did measure in both, I’m thinking (and so is Jodi) that we should be taking the Athletic reading as the more accurate one.  If that is the case my percentage of body fat is 8.8%!

Awesome!

My muscle measurements were all about the same except for the thighs, which I think is a bit strange.  My thighs went down by about 5cm in circumference each.  The last time I did an assessment was at the end of running season in September when I was running 10k races and such, I have played a lot of hockey since then and worked legs and started running again so I don’t know what is up there, maybe it is just leaner, seems odd to me.

One of the real successes of the evening though was the beep test.  I think I have mentioned this before as well.  Last time I ran the beep test I completed level 9.5, which is not too shabby, tonight I completed level 10.5.  That is great, if I was in the police foundations course in college or the firefighter program I would just need to make level 11 to be perfect.  Just 30 more seconds of running.  I think if we had done this assessment in the morning instead of six in the evening I would have made it too.  So that will be my next plan in a few months when we do this all over again, do the assessment in the morning, and complete level 11 or die trying.

So as with any grading or assessment I have areas to be really happy about and areas that need a little more focus.  I’m excited again to have another marker on this journey of fitness and hopefully I can get everything to where I would like it in time for the Warrior Dash in July.