Kevin Nicol, a research assistant and D1 cyclist, crunches numbers as Robert Jones warms up for his testing in the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center's Human Performance Laboratory. Nicol, 46, ascribes to CU Prof Inigo San Millan's metabolic fitness philosophy. Nicol can cycle up Golden's four-mile, 1,250-foot Lookout Mountain in 17 minutes flat, 10 minutes faster than I do.
I played college soccer and have, in the ensuing 23 years, held firm to a no-pain, no-gain exercise philosophy. As recently as a couple of of weeks ago I still scoffed at the “fat burn” heart-rate levels my Polar FT7. I ran at 95 percent of max heart rate on up, short distances (3-6 miles). With cycling, the distances were longer, but the story more or less the same. I went out and ripped it up.
Finally, for a story I did for UCH Insider that posted Wednesday, I came to understand how wrong I’ve been all these years.
It’s not that you don’t need to just bust it out sometimes. I play indoor soccer (O.K., coed over-30), and the sport’s still about racing into the deep red, recovering, and doing it again. But the folks at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Health and Wellness Center have taught me that to go faster for longer, you first need to go slow. It took explanations from some of the best minds in exercise science to get me to finally understand why. It’s about something called metabolic fitness, and it boils down to mitochondrial density. For more, check out the piece.
So I’ve slowed down, though not because of age so much as newfound wisdom.
