It is not a matter of being a champion or not. The problem is that we run ultra distance. If Mo Farah can control himself on a 10k, on the track and field, where he can count the laps and all is flat, well... we cannot. We are ultra runners and we do it on the trail.
After 30 km we tend to forget who we are and how much fuel is left. We barely keep in mind the next 30 km ahead and 20 more after that. Not to mention those who run 100km. Add to this tragedy that the track is dirty and we need to jump that root, that stone, dig a leg into water and sand. And the hills. Don't forget the hills. We prefer to say "I go out for a run, 1500" where that number are the meters that separate us from the ground. You know what I am talking about.
How can we control ourselves in such a hell of a track?
The purists would agree with me that there are no technological instruments that can tell a runner how far he can go, for how long and how fast. They say that the best and most reliable way is to know ourselves. I'm sorry, not in such a scenario.
There is an instrument that, if used with care, can give us precious info about our condition during a long long run.
Training with a heart rate monitor is one of the best ways to avoid to burn ourselves on the trail.
An example I already wrote about was the one of the Ecotrail 2013 in Paris. That race became a nightmare for one specific reason: I was ignoring my heart.
Unless you have access to a specific lab in which they can measure your VO2Max value, one good heuristic to measure your aerobic threshold is by using the heart rate monitor of your watch and the track&field.
One test is the Conconi test which is easy to run and quite reliable. It consists in running each lap at a speed 10% faster than the lap before, until you cannot hold it anymore. The difficulty consists in convincing yourself that you are really on your limit. There are mechanisms of our body that will prevent from getting there. Just be aware of it.
At home you plot velocity and heart rate on a graph. You should see a straight line during your low pace running and a different slope at some point, which seems to split the graph in two. That is a good estimate of your anaerobic threshold. In my case it is around 155 bpm, which is indeed correct.
There are many other formulas, from trivial ones such as MaxHeartRate - 0.7*Age , also known as Tanaka's formula.
I never used such formula and could not find any empirical evidence of its usability.
The test should be run at least twice per year, in order to check if our heart is responding to specific training strategies designed to increase the aerobic threshold, which I will describe in a later post.
When in doubt, follow your heart.
Run safe!
