article: Media playback is not supported on this device A feeling every professional footballer has when thinking about pre-season is pure dread - even while the tans are being topped up on a beach far, far away from a sweaty British gym or open field. Just how hard can it be, though? Are they just overpaid moaners or are they athletes pushed to their absolute limit? To find out, some idiot from BBC Sport (me) did the same test many footballers up and down the country are doing for their fitness. I'm a 24-year-old occasional runner, casual cyclist and failed box-to-box midfielder with severe weaknesses for chicken wings, chocolate milkshake and custard doughnuts. That makes me decidedly 'average' with a body to match - a perfect comparison between the everyday individual, whatever that is, and finely tuned athletes. With trepidation, I travelled to the University of Essex on one of the warmest weeks of the millennium to take a test "to the point of exhaustion" alongside players from League One side Colchester United. The test I did was very similar to the notorious VO2 Max test, in that you run on a treadmill with incremental speed increases until you can literally go no longer - the only difference being I was not wearing a Bane-like oxygen mask so would not find out what my VO2 Max was. "The players don't like it because they don't want to be taken out of their comfort zone," said U's sports scientist Stefano Russo. "But for us, we get to see blood lactate measurements which we can compare to the end of the season to see where they are at and what they've been doing. "We also measure their maximum heart-rates so we can monitor their training and make sure training loads aren't pushing them too hard." Russo talked about blood lactate - but what is it and why is it important to test? "During exercise, lactic acid is broken down into lactate and a hydrogen ion," explained Chris McManus from the University of Essex. "It is this lactate that accumulates in the blood and is reflective of the intensity of the exercise bring completed. "Well-trained athletes are able to maintain a lower level of lactate accumulation during exercise at higher intensities." If pain is your thing, you can have a go at it yourself. Start the treadmill at about nine kilometres per hour and increase it every three minutes, with a 45-second break in between. You also need someone to take a blood sample during that short haven when you can suck in some oxygen. For the footballers and I, however: "We start at 11 kmh, and they typically last up to 18-19 kmh," said McManus. "We could all probably jump on the treadmill and run at 20 kmh for a couple of minutes, but these guys are starting at 11 and every three minutes it goes up by around 1.5 kmh." Sounds great, doesn't it? So great that it was the only thing that the players - and therefore myself - were allowed to do
summary: Profusely sweating, panting for air and feeling lunch turning in my stomach - I thought to myself 'Why did I volunteer for this?'