It’s not a shark but the blank page that can induce a sense of failure in a writer, observed US singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman today on BBC Radio 2 (about 75 minutes in). She said the hardest work you may do as a writer is staring at that blank space for two hours when nothing is coming through.

But achieving nothing concrete in that time is not failure. “You just lifted 2,000 pounds in the gym of creativity,” she said. She also used a marathon metaphor: “People don’t run out the door and run 26 miles. They create the muscles first.” You do that by making sure you turn up and try, even if you don’t write something.

Nielsen Chapman teaches creativity and songwriting and believes creativity exists within everyone, but in many of us this is blocked. It’s like a fine white linen towel on a high shelf waiting to be reached and pulled down, she said.

Perhaps, as well as latent talent, it is knowledge of how to persist that separates the elite athlete or the Nielsen Chapman from the rest of us. They persist until they can reach.

What if you could turn the clock back and find that you had what it takes to be an Olympic athlete? Peter Keen, the UK’s head of high performance at UK Sport, the funding body, recently said that armchair athletes in their twenties today are not too late to consider participating in the London Olympics in 2012, assuming they have the latent ability, and are prepared to put in the work. However, they would have to choose an endurance event like marathon or cycling.

The Maximal Test I took last Friday is recommended by Bath University Human Peformance Centre before any potential athlete embarks on an extensive and demanding training programme. It presupposes the individual will use a heart rate monitor. (You can acquire a basic model for around £50). The test will tell you all sorts of vital statistics about your current strength, and highlight any deficiencies. Above all, it could reveal a hidden talent concealed within your genetic make-up.

When I first took one a couple of years ago, I nearly fell out of my chair. Although not quite good enough for elite competition, my endurance ability, as measured by my so-called VO2 Max was 61. When I repeated the test last Friday, it had edged up marginally. Professional marathoners tend to produce a number from 70 upwards. With training and some loss of weight my VO2 Max might still go up. It may well have been higher when I was younger.

If you are in your twenties now, lurking within you might be a professional athlete waiting to get out. There are plenty of good examples too of athletes who found themselves later in life. See later posts for some notable winners.

What does a Maximal Test do?

The sports laboratory, while measuring your heart rate at different running paces, also analyses how effectively your body converts oxygen by capturing your exhaled breath and running it through a computer to ascertain that VO2 Max number. With a few regular pin-pricks in your fingers, the scientists will also tell you how much lactic acid you produce at different speeds. This helps determine how you need to train to improve. When our muscles ache, that’s lactic acid doing its worst. The more we work, the more we produce. Ironically, my test showed I need to run at slower speeds and longer distances to improve my running economy. I was a bit better at higher speeds, possibly because I run too fast in training.

They also test your iron levels. Mine were fine for this type of activity.

Resting Heart Rate 51

Weight 72 kg

Mood

No exercise

Sleep disturbed, felt viral during night. Long day working in the City. Chose not to run despite programme.