Athletes complete set up test

Six months out from the start of the Red Bull X-Alps 2009 and the four athletes on Suunto's training programme have begun training in earnest. Christian Amon (AUT), Honza Rejmanek (USA) and Aidan Toase (GBR1) have completed set up tests and are now reporting back to physiologist and coach Eddie Fletcher on a weekly basis with thier training log files.

Michael Gebert (GER) has just got back from a trip to Brazil and will begin the programme within the next few days.

Eddie established Christian, Honza and Aidan's personal settings by getting them to do a Conconi test on a treadmill. Says Eddie, "starting at 8.0km/h, the speed was increased by 0.5km/h every 200m to failure." And by failure, Eddie means until they couldn't keep up with the increased running pace.

A typical log file from a Conconi test looks like this:


"Set-up is so important to get right," continues Eddie. "all three are extremely talented athletes and on pure test came out at Activity classes 8-9. On training hours they will increase to Activity classes 9-10.

From the test data, I've been able to establish the durations and heart-rates applicable to each Training Effect level."

Here's Honza's settings: