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So we spoke extensively about lab testing, and obviously lab testing is
not something that is available to everybody.
And it can also be quite disruptive
of our training,
and might not be something that you want to use. And you know coming
from Africa, I did a lot of my coaching
without the benefit of labs, even though we have some good exercise
physiology labs there. As a schoolteacher and a coach of all the high school
cross-country and track athletes
you know i couldn't be popping everybody in a bus and going
down to a sport science lab and paying
to three hundred dollars per athlete to have them all tested.
So I'd made extensive use of field testing, and
evaluating ourselves is something that the high-level runner and the
high level endurance athlete
is much better at, than the average athlete,
and we tend to avoid discovering where we are. And if we don't know where we are
it's really really hard
to aim at a certain performance.
I found that when people approach me they're very clear
of the kind of result they want, and what they want to achieve.
But when I ask them what their... what the best times are, they have the
sense of those, but what their current status is
they don't like that. If i say to an athlete all right you know what's your
current 5k shape? They say they don't know. And I'm saying well your fitness that
one were reasonably fitness ok lets do go down to the to the track tomorrow and
do a workout that gives us a sense of where you are at with the 5k,
especially in terms of your training pace.
And then they ask for time to train, or something like that they just...
we tend to want to avoid that, that's kind of confronting
I understand that. So let's have a look at the how we can utilize some
field test to find out what's going with us, alright.
So many of the of field test, if you have controlled your variables pretty well, in
other words you using a tract,
and you choosing a time of day where the temperatures good, and you also
you know controlling them.
Things like when do you know you know doing these evaluations on windy
days,
and you creating the similar kind of stress expectations
that they might expect in races,
or that they would expect from a labtest. You can get very very similar results, but
just be aware that there
are more variables out there. But to find out what people's training paces are
not difficult to do it all. I give a pretty extensive explanation in my book
run workout for runners in triathletes, how you can determine all your vary
training paces. The other thing to look at to is, is what are your favorite
sessions?
and how frequently do you do them?
So these are your benchmark session, so while it's a work out
and while it's improving your fitness, it's also giving you a lot of feedback both
in terms
of physiological data,
pace data, emotional response, confidence,
and also mentally where your training is at. So those favorite sessions
are
good ones to have. Again look at those training sessions from a
perspective that you can walk away from them, and come back to training quite
quickly, you don't want to be going out and doing
a twenty five-mile
time trial to find out what your marathon shape is in,
or you know even anything more than fifteen miles, that's pretty
demanding for most of us.
So be careful how you choose those test sets.
The other thing to look at is your favorite race distance,
so if you look at you know on a performance prediction chart, there's a number
of them online, I really like what Gregg McMillan's doing on his site
with his race time prediction, tables, and training pace suggestions and so on,
so with looking at that mcmillan running dot com
is to look at what your favorite distance is. The race distance that you tend to
do best at,
and then go and have a look at, say your best race distance is a 10 k
on a chart your 10 k is much much better than your 5 k, and way better than your
marathon.
And try and find out, is that something to do with your muscle type with your
personality type?
or is it just that your type of training? In other words you're
pretty well trained to go
or whatever your 10 k time is 35, or 45, or
55 minutes.
You're pretty well trained to do that, but you're only running say 20 miles a
week or 30 miles a week.
And so you're not doing enough volume for that ability that you displayed
in 10 k
to translate to the marathon or to the longer races. So that's
important thing to look at as well. The other thing is to look at the kind of race
that you like, you know, do you like trail running? do you like
cross-country running? do you like rolling hilly courses? do you like hot
humid courses? do you like flat fast cool courses?
Those will also point towards certain things, as some people have
fantastic physiology and the mechanics are not so good, or their running skill
is not so good, so they do really really well on tough courses.
But when the speed is too high, they just don't have the mechanics to
maintain that speed, even though they might have
the physiology to do that, both central and peripheral. So look at that,
so something that i use very much in terms of field testing is something
called fatigue index. And your fatigue index,
and i'll talk about it much more
in detail at a later stage, but you're fatigue index just in terms of
casting yourself is a very useful tool.
It basically tells you
how much do you slow down with each doubling of distance? So in other
words,
your 5 k pace versus your 10 k pace, how much slow is you 10 k
pace? And you typically find with high-end triathletes, you know
they get about as low as 5 %, so they slow down about 5 % with
each doubling of distance. But some high end runners are in the low 2 %
range, in other words they slow down a little less, the specific
runners.
But, for example if your fatigue index between your 5 or 10 k
is say 6 or 7,
and your fatigue index between your 10 k,
and your marathon is 11 or 12, then it's just
pointing towards you having a
very low endurance. And so it's a good way to look at that, then
your fatigue index is also good way for you to see
if you have
a nice, low fatigue index in your power events
you might be more suited to those. So if you look at something like
you see in both
he has a much higher fatigue index
between his 100 and his 200, than say a top marathon runner
would have between their half marathon and their marathon. And so the power
type athletes have a higher fatigue index and the endurance type athletes have a
low fatigue index.