The Nose Knows

There is a lot of strange terminology and abbreviations in triathlon and exercise science and for the neophyte it might all be a bit confusing. Don't worry, you are not alone! Hell, I've been involved in endurance sports for more than two and a half decades and it's just as abstruse to me.

Here are some examples:

FTP (functional threshold pace)
AeT (aerobic threshold)
MAF (maximum aerobic function)
MAP (maximum aerobic pacing)
AnAet (anaerobic threshold)
LT (lactate threshold)
AT (anaerobic threshold) (Appalachian Trail)
VT (ventilatory threshold) (very tired)
MSS (maximum steady state)
ATP (adenosine 5-triphosphate) (annual training plan)
SHIT (sudden high intensity training)
MILF (*** this, I fear, is not worth translating***)
UPS (United Parcel Service)

This is just a small collection and it might already leave you asking WTF?! (What the f*ck?).

The one that gets my goat the most, besides the SHIT, is the highly ambiguous "aerobic threshold". It's not the same thing as a MAF or MAP or MSS, apparently, but the idea is that you have this threshold where things start to shift when you go beyond this intensity. Cool enough, I guess. I mean, I can certainly feel it. I also know the gears on my bike shift when I go beyond a certain level of intensity too, because I shift them. I also know when my bowels shift into another gear because it's then time to go shit (not SHIT).

But for all the confusion about this "aerobic threshold", it needn't be this way. A heart-rate monitor will help inform you of this level and to a lesser extent, so too will an expensive power-meter. A portable lactate analyzer will also work, of course. Your brain and good, old fashioned intuition can also do the job, if that intuition is in tune and tuned in. But there's one more way to know whether you're working aerobically or anaerobically and it's as plain as the nose on your face. In fact, it is the nose on your face!

Okay, Pinocchio, here's the gist. (Please note that the scientists will tell you the following is an overly simplified, untried and unverified study---a malodorous crock of shit (not SHIT). They will tell you this for a few reasons, primarily because they want their jobs to mean something. Look. We all want our time here on Earth to mean something, but let's face facts: it doesn't. You're born. You live. You die. You fertilize daffodils.)

Anyway, here it goes:

When you're exercising hard, you breathe hard. When you're exercising easy, your breathing gets easier. So far, so good...I don't suspect I've lost anybody yet. (If I have, you've probably found the perfect niche in triathlon. You go caveman!)

Well, what happens as you begin to breathe harder is you also begin to shift your metabolism into a more anaerobic one, or what those of us in the know refer to as a sugar-burning (muscle glycogen-utilizing) mode. There are a lot of things going on inside your body as this shift takes place but the overriding memo is that you're now depending on a higher percentage of muscle glycogen than you would otherwise have been, had your breathing been less labored.

One of the interesting things about this shift is that it almost always directly correlates with the inability to breathe with your mouth closed (while working anaerobically). And while exercising aerobically (in a fat-utilizing mode) it's easier to breathe through your nose. In layman's terms, if you can continue to breathe through your nose as you exercise, you're far more aerobic than if you need to open that big, germ-ridden mouth of yours to gasp for air. Essentially, your nose knows when you're starting to blow.

Now I don't advocate throwing out your heart-rate monitor or power-meter or getting a nose job---or even wearing those silly Breathe Right® strips to help open the old olfactory canal---but if you allow your schnoz to share some of its understanding, it's one more way to be sure you're sticking to an aerobic zone when you're supposed to be. As for when that is I'd love to tell you, but you'll have to hire me or Lucho or Gordo or Mitch Gold or Kevin Purcell or Mark Allen or Alan Couzens or John "You've Been" Hadd as your coach to find out. The odd thing about this bunch is that we all have fairly big noses. I think Mark has got us all there though, and it's perhaps why he won the Ironman so many damn times. So I say if you're considering having a nose job done, consider getting it enlarged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Nose Prose

Your nose knows
When you're about to blow
Your nose knows
When your pace should slow

Your nose knows
When the oxygen flows
Your nose knows
Its anaerobic woes

Some Facts about Noses, etc…

**A "broken" nose is not actually broken; it can still do its job.
**The human nose can decipher 50,000 scents.
**Scents are one of the body's strongest memory triggers, no matter the stench.
**A "runny nose" is not actually running anywhere.
**A bear can out-smell a human 1000 to 1, unless said human has been in the woods for 8 months at a time.
**You do most your tasting with your nose.
**There are an estimated 5 to 20 million scent receptors in the human nose.
**Snoring is often associated with sleep apnea but is deemed "normal".
**Cold may cause colds! Recent studies suggest that when you're chilled, the vessels in your schnoz constrict and deliver less warm blood to its lining---which means fewer white blood cells to boost the immune system and fight disease.
**When you "turn your nose up" at something (like the scientists do when they read this blog, for example) you are actually giving a compliment in some cultures. Thank you!
**Excessive nose-picking is called rhinotillexomania. If you pick your nose a lot, you are a rhinotillexomaniac.
**Michael Jackson, my neighbor (no kidding!) has had so many "nose jobs" he no longer has a nose. The job is finished, I guess you'd say.
**A skunk's nose is more powerful than a human's nose, yet his smell doesn't bother him.
**In order to smell something, molecules from what you're smelling need to enter your nose. Everything you smell, therefore, is giving off molecules called odorants, essentially evaporating chemicals floating through the air into your nose. A cold piece of metal has no smell because nothing evaporates from it, but when you smell another person's shit (not SHIT), for example, you are actually ingesting it. Food for thought.