Hello all,
I am currently 7 days into a 12 week general fitness plan and have my Half Monty test scheduled for next week right before I go out of town to get tattooed. I will be down ~13 days between traveling and healing. My question is if I should postpone the Half Monty and my new 4DP numbers till after I am healed, or go ahead and do it before and come to to training at my new numbers?
Thanks in advance for the input!
Good question. I shall preface my answer by saying I am not an expert, or a coach, or a scientist of any kind.
I have however, taken the HM many times and it really isn’t an overly taxing test (unlike its counterpart Full Frontal 
)
Honestly, I doubt it will make that much difference. If you want a clear sense of your progress to date, you could take the test before you go out of town. I don’t believe you’ll lose that much fitness over the span of 2 weeks. When you come back you could just pick up where you left off and see how the workouts go.
Or, you could hold off and do it when you come back so you will have the most accurate training targets based on that point in time (probably the smarter thing to do).
You could even do it twice. HM is not so overly taxing that it will completely wipe you out. Doing it twice can satisfy your desire (if you have one) to know how well you progressed as well as providing you with accurate metrics going forward.
Thank you so much for the info. That’s pretty much what I was thinking. Do it before to see my current progression, and then once when I get back to see where I am. That should set me up to finish this current plan and then to get started on my race prep for the Mohican 100K in May.
You have alleviated stress and I appreciate it!
Excellent. Happy to help. I should clarify about HM though. It’s a ramp test so by design you will fail at some point and that at that point it is REALLY hard. When I say it’s not overly taxing I mean once you’re finished the whole thing (including the constrained HR effort) you shouldn’t feel like dying. I only add this cuz I don’t want to mislead you into thinking HM is easy.
As for your 100k race, that sounds super exciting!
Haha I had a feeling that’s what you meant, but I appreciate the clarification. I am excited to see where I fail now. Should give me a good view of my current fitness for sure.
Thank you again!
+1 (to any of the options).
@therza2169 , I agree with Sir @Glen.Coutts – I would test before you go. He is right, you will not lose too much during 2 weeks. When you are up to training repeat the week leading up to the Half Monty test, so that your body has a little reconditioning prior to the test. Good luck!
Thank you so much for the tips! I’m a total newb with training and this is extremely helpful.