The Poor Man's Power Meter
Use respiration rate to monitor training intensity and target a sustainable race pace.
Topic
Training
A collection of 12 issues
Lactate Curves: 3 Shifts, 13 Reasons
A lactate curve is shaped by the tension between anaerobic and aerobic capacity. Judging a curve by only the latter is incomplete and error prone.
Five Benefits of Training in Silence
Silence doesn’t just remove noise—it reveals signal. And multiplies it by ten.
Four Key Ingredients of Pure Speed
Even long-duration sports benefit from a "speed base." But like many training protocols, how to train pure speed is counter-intuitive.
Can a three-hour run reveal aerobic threshold?
"Is it crude to use the average heart rate from a 3-hour run to roughly guesstimate aerobic threshold (AeT)?"
Detraining: How far can you fall?
Over three years of detraining, my anaerobic and aerobic threshold speeds have declined 23% and 26%, respectively. At a climb rate of 1,000 meters per hour, my heart rate has increased 37%. Detraining, age, altitude—and attitude—are all factors.
How long can aerobic capacity improve?
"I've read that aerobic capacity building can go on for 6, 8 or 10 years, even for full-time athletes. And I recently read how Nils van der Poel spent ~30 hours/week for 3 years in building his aerobic base."
How does cooling down improve aerobic capacity?
"What is the reason for cooling down after a workout? What are the consequences if we never cool down? Does the kind of workout matter? What does the ideal cool down look like?"
What metabolic information can we get from a flat half-marathon?
"I've read that a time trial for 10k or 45 min or 1 hr is a general test for one's anaerobic threshold, and a marathon is raced at one's aerobic threshold. Is that true?"
Can gambling theory stop overtraining?
Overtraining—like overbetting—leads to ruin. Undertraining only slows the growth rate (but makes it more sustainable).