Most runners keep a running log, recording their performance of daily runs and racing events. The essence of the data is time and distance, which represent intensity and duration of training. Many factors influence performance, including day-to-day changes in health (physical and mental well-being), rest and recovery, the weather (heat/humidity), and running course/terrain.
My current running watch - not just a watch, but "a sports laboratory on your wrist" - is a Suunto T6C. When I connect my watch to my PC after a run, I see heart rate, respiration rate, altitude changes and rates, pace, and various calculated values including calories expended and EPOC. It even grades the run in terms of the Training Effect on my fitness level. Looking back at my note that "you can't manage what you don't measure" I am clearly measuring the heck out of my runs. Is it helping me train better?
Wednesday night I went to the track and did a Cooper Test. Essentially you warm up, and then run as far as you can in 12 minutes. Then take the distance and use Cooper's table to find your VO2 max number (or see a web site like this one .. http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/MinuteRun.html ). Your VO2 max number is something that you could also obtain, along with some other valuable insights into your running physiology, by paying some $$$ to a sports laboratory. VO2 is interesting because it predicts (correlates with) the best performance you can hope to achieve in your sport. An individual's VO2 max number is a function of fitness and genetics - fitness is the only factor we can change.
VO2 max is a measure of how much oxygen you can use. To measure it, a sports lab would want a runner on a treadmill to breath through a mask, and directly measure the air and oxygen inhaled and exhaled. The difference of course would be oxygen used. Note that this doesn't have much to do with lung capacity - all of us with healthy lungs can take in more than enough air, and exhale it right back out. The trick is to get it across the lung-to-blood boundary, and to your muscles to support the work they are doing. The amount of O2 crossing that boundary is driven by the demand of working muscles, and VO2 max levels will be reached when you are working those muscles as hard as you can. So this test is going to be stressful! A final adjustment accounts for differences in body size - a heavily muscled big person will have a larger amount of muscle than a smaller person, so VO2 max is reported on a 'per kilogram of body mass' basis to account for body size.
This is where my light bulb starts to glow ... If you want to improve your VO2 max (and predicted performance) upwards toward your genetic limits, you need to improve muscle fitness and decrease total body mass. There are limits on how lean you can or should get, but if you're carrying excess fat that isn't helping your VO2 max number one bit. Making the denominator in the VO2 ml / kg equation smaller may be just as effective as increasing muscle fitness in improving performance.
Training plans generally follow a path of building a conditioning base, building strength and power, and peaking for an event. There is no denying the need to train hard enough and specifically for the task you want to excel at. It's nice when losing some weight is a side effect of that training process. Losing weight could ultimately play just as large a role as increasing fitness in trying to achieve new performance levels. The metrics I record in my log each week for weight and calories expended may be just as important as times and distances.
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