How do you use benchmarks in your training?
Written by Sean Clancy Created Date: Thursday, 04 June 2009 00:00
How do you use benchmarks in your training?
When I was in the Navy it was easy to quantify fitness, as we had Physical Readiness Tests every 6 months:
How many pushups can you do in 2 minutes?
Situps in 2 minutes?
Pullups?
1.5 mile run?
500 meter swim?
My friends and training partners knew that "FIT" meant 100 pushups, 100 situps, around 20 pullups, around 8 minutes for the run, or under 8:00 for the swim (sidestroke!)...and we kept that in mind in our daily training throughout the year.
As endurance athletes spending so many hours running, biking, swimming, and paddling every week, how do we track our progress outside of racing? How do we gauge our fitness at the aerobic level and "race pace"?
Repeatable Benchmarks are how I monitor and quantify my specific fitness leading up to an event. Here in Southern California I have a few favorites: The "store to store" ride up Mt. Palomar, running the quad-thrashing "El Moro Loop", climbing Newport Coast, climbing Modjeska, climbing Blackstar on the mountain bike, The Five Fingers of DEATH at Aliso/Wood Canyon or climbing any of the Santa Monica mountains roads.
Each of these benchmarks tell me exactly where my fitness is on THAT day, at a given heart rate or watts. These data points connect over time to give me an idea of improvement or stagnation, and how my body is responding to the stimulus of my training program. Flatness tells me I am either overtrained (accompanied by the usual symptoms), or it is time to address my limiters such as lactate tolerance or strength/hills.
On a day-to-day basis I watch my Maximum Aerobic Fitness running pace, or MAF pace. My MAF pace is around 152 beats per minute which also corresponds to my "aerobic threshold" or first deepening of breath when exercising. This happens to fall about 15 beats per minute under the Lactate Threshold.
The actual heart rate can vary slightly due to dehydration of severe overtraining, so I temper the MAF with AeT to give me a good idea of a heart-rate cap for daily training. Of course on hard days this goes out the window and I blow the lid off completely. When you are training 15-25 hours per week, over 90% of your training time is likely to fall under this MAF cap if you are to remain healthy and continue to build fitness without nuking yourself.
These days I personally use and rely on a Suunto T6 heart rate monitor which not only gives splits with current and average heart rate, but also elevation gain/loss. I have had the same Suunto T6 since last spring, and it has lasted through 8 adventure races and over 1,000 hours of training. In the same time, I have had THREE Garmin watches fail: one ForeRunner and two "305" models. Additionally, I have had over 10 Polar heart rate monitors since 1992. Each has failed either due to water leaks, lens cracks, or just plain crapping out. Suunto is a sponsor, but if I were to make a buying purchase today with my own hard-earned cash it's easy to guess which I would buy. The Suunto also has compatibility with speed and cadence functionality for your bike, making it ideal for multisport usage.
Over the last several months, I have been able to lower my MAF pace to around 6:50/mile on a flat course. For a 6'2, 180lb guy with the biomechanics of a wounded water buffalo, that's not too shabby. Over the last several weekends I was able to knock off a few 20 mile runs right at 2hrs 17, always the day after 100-132 mile long rides. For Ironman training, and also for adventure racing, this is a key specific benchmark that I will work on throughout the year.
With 3 weeks until Ironman Couer d'Alene, my goal is to show up on race day HEALTHY and fit enough to qualify for the Hawaii Ironman at my "training pace". It will all boil down to hydration and fueling...which I will talk about next time!
What are your benchmarks?