I am so thrilled to be leading the 95Crave Team Diabetes Crew to Disney World this January. We’re currently recruiting members, so if you think you’ve got it in to you to walk or run a full or half marathon and raise some much needed funding and awareness for those living with Diabetes, please have a look at the Team Diabetes page for more details.
If joining the team is too much to ask, I’m also in the midst of raising $10 000 for Team Diabetes Easter Island in June 09. I’m 25% of the way to my goal, and any support you can offer is always appreciated.
With two big runs planned in the next year, I am taking my training seriously. One of the things the Team Diabetes program offers is speaking engagements. From diet to training to lifestyle, all the topics are covered. The most recent event was held at Peak Centre for Human Performance on Hastings in Burnaby.
Anita went through the physiological aspects of training. Lactic acid, lactate, VO2 Max, Aerobic Thresholds, and other sorts of stuff you’d expect Olympic athletes to know a lot about - but they’re important to weekend warriors too. Especially if you care about your time, and want to train effectively.
I went in last week and got myself hooked up to a respirator to measure how much of my oxygen is actually used by my body, and had my finger pricked and a blood sample taken every 3 minutes to measure the lactate I was producing. I had a heart monitor on, and every 3 minutes the intensity was increased until I couldn’t handle it anymore.
The data was crunched and a graph like this came out.
Today I went in for a debrief to explain my results and work on a training plan. The thing that really stood out for me is I’m training too hard. I’m working at a level where my heart rate isnt raising my aerobic threshold - I’m doing junk miles.
By training in Zone 2 and 3 I’m converting my medium twitch muscle fibres into fast twitch (ft), when really we want them to act as slow twitch (st) fibres. It all relates to the use of fat and carbs as fuel and the production or consumption of lactate. FT use carbs as fuel and produce lactate, while ST use fat as fuel and burn lactate. Since we have WAY more fat stores than carb stores, having the ST use fat as fuel is much more economical for distance runners. You can maintain your pace for longer.
So by doing my training in Zone 1, I can increase my anaerobic threshold, thereby keeping my ST in use longer. It’s hard for me to explain, but if you look at my performance at the recent Vancouver World Triathlon Championships Corporate Challenge, you see I spent all my time up at 95% of my max heart rate, when my training should be down near 70%.
The entire analysis was $150 and took 2 hrs over 2 appointments. If you’re interested in training effectively, and successfully, whether you join us on Team D or not, I would recommend a session with Peak Centre to better understand what your body can do and how you can do it better.
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