- vVO2max – Velocity at VO2max
- vLT – Velocity of Lactate Threshold (Turnpoint)
- vRE – Velocity of Running Economy
Two important metabolic markers for fitness are vVO2max and vLT. Traditionally, these are measured in a laboratory, using expensive equipment, and lots of blood-letting… TrainAsONE, however, can estimate them for you from your training (depending on your genetics and physiology, to an accuracy of 1 second per km pace) – and all without a needle in sight…
vVO2max – VO2max is the maximum rate at which your body can ‘process’ oxygen, i.e. the maximum amount of oxygen your lungs can absorb, your heart can pump around your body to your muscles, and your muscles can utilise. vVO2max is simply the minimum running velocity (speed / pace) to elicit VO2max. One metric of fitness is the speed at which you can run before hitting your VO2max, this is your vVO2max.
vLT – Lactate metabolism is an important aspect of the bodies energy generation (around 50% of the lactate produced during intensive exercise is used by muscles as a source of energy). Under periods of intense exercise the quantity of lactate in the blood increases, and a rapid increase is associated with diminishing performance. vLT, velocity of lactate threshold, is the speed/pace at which this rapid increase in blood lactate level occurs. Two general principles can be derived from this: 1. The faster your vLT pace is, the faster you can go before you suffer performance degradation; 2. and at any given pace below vLT, the greater your ‘time to limit of exhaustion’ (endurance potential). However, this is not to say that vLT is the golden metric endurance running – no one attribute serves such a purpose.
vRE – Put simply Running Economy is the energy expenditure to run at a given aerobic (sub-maximal) speed. As speed increases, so does the energy requirement. The determinants of an individual’s running economy is multi-factorial and complex, but its enhancement is key to improved endurance performance. Unlike VO2max, running economy is a good predictor of race performance. TrainAsONE estimates an ideal easy pace that helps both promote improvements in your running economy and recovery from prior hard sessions. We term this your vRE, and is a initial step with some exciting ideas we have planned around this topic.
N.B. At the present moment we are only plotting the results from assessments and certain races (this may help you spot runs that have been incorrectly classified as such).
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