Testing your Endurance

When testing an athletes aerobic endurance, beyond the scope of maximal work, which is measured by VO2 type tests is just to run for long periods of time and see what times are achieved.

This is probably sensible and once we run for more than about an hour the event will be at least 95% aerobic (this level is only about 75-80% for a VO2 max test).

So - a very good measure of an athletes aerobic endurance will be their half marathon or marathon times.

To a significant extent an athletes cardiovascular fitness is a good indicator of their endurance capabilities. This measures the speed at which a relatively light exercise is carried out and the athletes heart rate is measured as they recover.

A good test for this is the Harvard Step Test

Find a step which is 45-50 cm high - could be a box / a high step / low wall or chair.

Step up and down off it for 5 minutes - every two seconds - completing 150 steps in the durations.

Take the athletes pulse after 1 minute / 2 minutes and 3 minutes (for 30 seconds each time)

The score achieve is calculated using the following formula 30000 / (sum of the 3 pulses x 2)

excellent	> 90
good	80 - 89
high average	65 - 79
low average	55 - 64
poor	< 55

Use this table to measure your cardivascular fitness - if it isn't all that good, then some low level exercise for at least 30 mins, 3 times a week would be a good idea (this is something often neglected by sprinters). We all need to bit "fit to train" even if aerobic capacity isn't necessary for our individual events.