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The Quest for 2.59.59
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10-05-2008 10:17pm#1
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1) How did they calculate your VO2 max?
2) How do you measure your heart rate? Sports watch or something like that?
3) I see that one of your suggested training plan mentions training 6 days a week and aiming for 50 miles. What level runner is that aimed at? i.e. 2 or 3 years? I know that my feet would not have been able to handle that starting from scratch.
1) Incremental treadmill fitness test. ie wear mask which records the amount of oxygen you take in and CO2 you exhale. Then stand still for 3 mins while they record resting heart rate and respiratory status etc. then they take blood at the end of the 3 mins to check resting blood lactate levels. Then they start the treadmill at 10km/hour (this will vary depending on your fitness, but they will generally ask about your race times etc. and be able to tell from that roughly what speeds you will be capable of). Heart rate is taken every 30secs I think and blood lactate towards the end of the 3 mins. Then they put the treadmill up to 12 for 3 mins and repeat all tests, then 13, 14, 15 and so on until you can go no more. When I did the test in January I was 10'10". when I did it recently I was 11'00". Because the breathing aparatus calculates a score based on the amount of O2 you can consume (I think
), they then divide this by weight in kg's to get the VO2 max score. So if you were at the exact same level of fitness (ie raced the exact same time for the same distance under the same conditions) at the time of two different tests, but were at a different weight at the different test times, your VO2 max scores would be different. In this scenario, the lighter you are, the higher your VO2 max score.
Another reason my VO2 max was lower the second time (I think) was as follows: first time I did it I got to speed 18 and was ready to collapse (you wear a harness in case you do collapse :eek: as it is supposed to be a test to exhaustion). The second time I got to speed 19 and felt more comfortable (relative to how one usually feels at the end of these tests anyway, which kind of feels like a never ending sprint finish at the end of a long race), but knew that there was no way I would make 3 mins at 20 as did the tester. As they take the blood latate level towards the end of the increment, and this is what is used mostly in constructing my training plan (heart rate at lactate turnpoint), we finished the test at the end of 19. But if I carried on for maybe another minute (at speed 20), which I think I could have, I'd have got to the 'almost ready to collapse' stage, hence would have been breathing much harder and so would have probably recorded a higher VO2 max. But as the VO2 max figure is not used for my training plan (and I don't like to have that much pain too often, and I had a race 2 nights later etc etc) I stopped before the point of max exertion.
2) I use a Garmin Forerunner 305 which has a heart rate monitor (have to wear strap around chest) which can be read from a watch.
3) My first run 4 years ago was about 15mins and I had to stop and walk home. Did this x 2 a week initially then upped to x 3, then gradually upped the time. After about 6 months of running 2-3times a week, it gradually upped to 4, then 5, then 6 after about a year. Even then I'd say it took me at least 3 years training before I could regularly do 6 days a week. Up to then even though I planned to do 6 days a week, more often than not I'd only do 4 or 5. But it reached a stage where if I didn't do 50miles a week, my times in races started to slow. So because of this and because after 3 years I was fit enough for it and the body was strong/adapted enough to take it I now try to tun 6 days a week as routine with a 50mile general target. But that's obviously a lot to someone new. Gradually build up. Don't know how much exactly a new person should do, varies on starting fitness I suppose.
Most marathon training plans are 3-4months long with 4-6 days a week running. But I would bnever advise anyone new to do this. If you are new, you should be running for 6 months before trying this as it would probably take that long to tolerate running even 4 times a week. I think it's the people who just do a 3-4 month plan having not run before that find it so difficult and are stiff for days after. Most runners I know can run the next day, probably because they have had a good base prior to embarking on the marathon training plan.0 -
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