Getting ready for the festival...

With just over a week to go until the start of the 2011 Edinburgh Scinece Festival, I'm making the final preparations for the trip. The main concern is that none of the essential equipment is left behind when we board the plane to Edinburgh next Thursday morning! Sports science testing generally requires a lot of 'kit', so careful preparation and planning is required when testing outside of the lab setting, to make sure all the necessary tools are there to complete the testing accurately and safely. The testing at Edinburgh will be carried out using a cycle ergometer, which we will borrow from Herriot Watt University, so that's one thing off the list. The other essential piece of kit is the device for testing oxygen saturation in the muscle, the near infrared spectrometer called the Portamon. Fortunately, this is a portable device, about the size of a mobile phone, so won't take up too much space.  Even so, the kit list for the festival includes: 3 laptop computers, power leads, weighing scales, heart rate monitors, battery chargers...the list goes on.

So what will we be testing in Edinburgh?

At the festival, we will invite both adults and children to undertake a Wingate test on a stationary cycle ergometer. The test lasts 30 seconds, and involves the subject pedalling as hard as they can against a fixed resistance. The level of this resistance is based on the person's mass, so the lighter a person is, the smaller the resistance they will pedal against. During the test, the Portamon will be attached to the subject's quadriceps (thigh) muscle, and will show information in real-time on a laptop computer about the saturation of oxygen in the muscle. We can then use that data to see: how much the muscle oxygen saturation changes during the test; how quickly this happens; and how fast it recovers back to the 'normal' level once the exercise is completed. We will also collect data about heart rate changes, and the amount of power the subject can apply to the bike pedals during the test. So - quite a lot of information to gather in just 30 seconds! We hope that children and their parents will both choose to take part, so that they (and we!) can compare their different results in the test. Testing will be open to people of all ages and abilities, and we'll be bringing sports kit for you to borrow, so there's no excuse for not having a go!

 What will the data look like?

A previous study I have done using the Portamon device was with the GB short-track speed skating squad. In this study, a Portamon device was attached to the quadriceps muscle on each leg, so we could compare the two. We filmed the skaters doing 500m race simulations, and then synchronised the data with this footage. This photo shows an example of the data we gathered about the muscle tissue oxygen saturation of a skater during the race. This is the same technology that we will be using at Edinburgh!

Looking forward to getting started next week, and hoping to see lots of people who are keen to get involved!

Catherine