Christian builds his endurance base

Despite the seemingly never-ending winter and huge amount of snow in the Alps, Christian Amon has managed to get out running in the region surrounding his home town of Hallstatt in Austria.


Coach Eddie Fletcher has analysed his latest effort: a half-marathon session that took 1hr 55min 9sec.

"This is a steady run of 22 km," says Eddie, "note the control of heart-rate (HR) and speed for energy conservation. However even at this low intensity (average HR is 78% of his maximum) energy consumption was 1674 kcals due to the long duration.


"Nutrition is so important on a daily basis. On days like this Christian would need up to 3900 kcals depending on what other activities he does. If he only rested for the next 24 hours he would need 3200 kcals.


"This type of long endurance session is extremely good for building the base which Christian will need for the Red Bull X-Alps. At a Training Effect of 3.4, recovery is short providing he rests and eats accordingly."

Fartlek anyone?

Writes Aidan:

"Fartlek training (Fartlek means 'speed play in Swedish') is a great way of improving speed and performance and is particularly useful if your short on time but need to get a good training session in. Fartlek is all about mixing it up and introducing variation in speed and intensity in to your running routine. Pick an object in the distance and run towards it as though your pants were on fire.

"How fast and how far you run is up to you. Following bursts of speed with recovery jogs. The amount of time allotted for recovery is up to you as well. Catch your breath, let your heart rate slow down, and jog the jelly feeling out of your legs. Then take off for another 30-second burst.

"It also helps you understand your body. You don't want to push so hard you injure yourself, yet you need to rise to the challenge of pressing past the point where you want to quit. For this reason, Fartlek sessions are great for developing self-awareness of what you're capable of as a runner.


"Here is a log of a Fartlek session, The good thing with the Suunto Training Manager software is that after you have finished, you can download your heart-beat and distances and see how hard you actually worked. The top graph is heart beat, the bottom line measures the 'Training Effect'."


Tip: Use the Foot POD to measure speed and distance, and click here to learn how to pair it with a t6c.

Honza goes running

One of the benefits of Suunto's Training Manager software is the ability to overlay graphs of similar training sessions and analyse the difference in performance between each session.

Honza Rejmanek (USA) regularly runs a standard 15km route, maintaining a similar average speed. You might think that his heart rate (HR) and Training Effect (TE) would also be similar, but the graph below showing three separate sessions on the 15km course indicates how they can vary.


Note that while his average speed changes very little (13.1, 13.2 or 13.3km/h), his average heart rates were 163, 153 and 158bpm. Consequently, his TE was 4.8, 4.0 and 4.3.

"The 4.8 reflects a hard day at work!" Says coach Eddie Fletcher. "It really illustrates why it is better to train HR to make sure TE doesn't go too high and cause recovery issues."

"Listen to your heart," advises Eddie.

Keep an eye on your heart rate Honza!

Re-creating the Alps.. in London

Here's what British athlete Aidan Toase says about preparing for tough alpine climbs despite living in London. Bear in mind that the Grossglockner pass, which Aidan hiked over in 2007, rises to 2428m above sea level, whereas the highest point in Great Britain's capital is Westerham Heights, 245m above sea level.


"One note I made whilst competing in the Red Bull X-Alps 2007 was that the Alps are definitely somewhat more mountainous than London. I suffered with injuries because I was less adapted to climbing mountains. I therefore need to bring more hills into my training this year to improve this.


"Hill repeats are a great way of training, with the Sunnto t6c I can exactly monitor how much ascent and descent I do on any particular run and see how my heat beat changes increasing dramatically as I reach the top of the 40m hill before recovering on the way down, see charts below, the top chart is my heart beat and the bottom is my altitude). I will be doing increasing amounts of these over the coming months to improve my strength and overall fitness - let's hope it works!"