In a gleaming white lab kitted out with props straight out of science fiction, I'm pounding a treadmill in a mask seemingly designed to protect against a nuclear disaster. A man in a white coat stares at a bank of screens, shouting at me to keep up the effort as I pant into the tubes.

Not so long ago, identifying a potential sports star was a matter of how far you could sprint around a track, or kick a football. Now, sports scientists are routinely using advanced tests to determine fitness, agility, body composition, reaction times and much more. But how does an average recreational athlete compare? A recent convert to running, I'm at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute lab (GSSI) at Loughborough University, which has gathered statistics on everyone from Victoria Pendleton to Tim Brabants, to find out my potential.

First, I'm weighed and measured. Disappointingly, it turns out I've been kidding myself about my height for years. Or I've shrunk. Weight, though, is less important than body composition (a distance runner will weigh less than a heavyweight boxer) and it's the latter that the first of a series of hi-tech tests will assess.

I am made to sit in a BodPod, and given a full body Dexa (dual energy x‑ray absorptiometry) scan that uses low energy x-rays to examine bone density and create a picture of your internal body fat. After that, it's on to the treadmill for the VO2 max test, which measures fitness. This consists of running at increasing speed and gradient while puffing into that armageddon-proof mask, a disconcerting experience as it reduces your vision to virtually nothing.

Meanwhile, Dr James Carter, head of the GSSI, is recording all of my data. Passing me a towel and bottle of water, he explains the results: "One of the key markers is RER – respiratory exchange ratio – which is the combination or the ratio of oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide produced. When that ratio goes over one, you are dipping into your anaerobic zone. That's when we know to increase the gradient."

An average woman has a VO2 max of around 35 ml/kg/min while an elite athlete might be as high as 70 ml/kg/min (for men the range is around 40-85). Mine is 54, which is not going to give Jessica Ennis any sleepless nights but is respectable for a recreational runner. I also turn out to be a carb burner rather than a fat burner, which I'm taking as licence to eat more toast.

Next up are a couple of cognitive function tests. The first uses a large board full of bulbs, which light up in a random sequence. You hit the lights to turn them off, while simultaneously shouting out the numbers that appear on a small screen. I do better than I expected, scoring 78 (the average is 48), which I put down to the antics of my two small children. I don't do so well at the whole-body agility test – a frame with 12 lights at varying heights you have to leap or duck to turn off – but Dr Carter reassures me that this matters less for endurance than for other sports.

After measuring my handgrip strength (I'm chuffed to be "average", given my arms are like spaghetti), it's time for the final hurdle: the Wingate test. Or as I shall always think of it, the longest 30 seconds of my life. You pedal on a stationary bike, then accelerate madly for 10 seconds before trying to sustain that power for 30 seconds. Sound easy? Add in increasing resistance and it feels as if you are cycling through treacle on a bike with two flat tyres into a headwind. Hours later I can still feel the lactic acid burning in my legs. "Sprinters, cyclists – this is their test," explains Dr Carter. "Your Chris Hoys, Victoria Pendletons – they need to be performing well on this or there's something wrong."

It's easy to imagine a future in which babies are screened at birth to join a super breed – or at least an elite training programme. As Dr Carter puts it: "Hey, we've all seen Rocky IV." He is joking – but in truth, it's not so implausible. "To look at someone's genome and say, are they suited to team sports? Endurance? That kind of athlete profiling may be accessible in the next decade. Say we've then got 10 people who are genetically suited to certain sports, are we going to put them through that regime for the next decade, take them from age 15 to Olympic champion? Who knows if that's possible, but that's where some of the research is going."

There are, of course, things the tests can't show yet: the psychology of the athlete, tactics, nutrition. "Pain tolerance, doing the training day in, day out, self-belief," says Dr Carter. "These are huge factors. At the very highest levels, the differences between gold and an Olympic semi-final might be 1%."

And for the amateur athlete? I've learned a huge amount about what I could feasibly achieve in my next race, based on scientific data, as well as specific steps to move up to my goal of a full marathon. And next time I come back, I'm determined to conquer that bike.