Monitoring Your Performance

When we race regularly we know how our performance is tracking. This is great for athletes who race short distances on a regular basis, but not so great for athletes building for a long event like a marathon. So how can we monitor our performance without racing regularly, or without actually racing the full distance?

Firstly we must identify the key aspects of our goal event. How important is endurance/speed and what type of speeds will we be running in the event? Let take two examples:

1. Marathon - aerobic activity, so performance is driven by aerobic conditioning (endurance), economy and for faster runners, anaerobic threshold. However, fatigue resistance is crucial for the novice right through to the elite surging at 40km for the win.
2. 5km - performance is driven by VO2 max, anaerobic threshold, lactate tolerance while endurance is a requirement but will not really dictate performance.

Next we need to try and develop a practical test that is easy to implement, not too fatiguing (so it won't interrupt training for days afterwards) and measures the key performance parameters of our goal event, as set out above.

1. Marathon example - 8km tempo at marathon goal pace, followed by a 2km time trial. During the tempo portion we can measure speed and HR to look at our physiological adaptation at marathon speed. We can then assess fatigue resistance and lactate threshold through the higher intensity 2km effort at the end of the tempo. Our performance can then be assessed on HR for tempo and time for the time trial. Both become important to assessing our performance.
2. 5km example - the 5km is a little easier than the marathon to monitor performance. My recommendation would be something similar to 5x1km with a 1 minute recovery, where performance is based on the average 1km time. This means running each effort as hard as possible, while pacing yourself adequately to complete 5 efforts.

When completing our performance tests, it is also important that they be completed in a similar manner each time. This means over the same course and in similar environmental conditions if possible. 

Whatever you choose for your performance test, there is no right or wrong. The key is a consistent test, setting a baseline and then measuring your change over time.

TOMORROW: How do we assess racing and training effort?