Running Endurance Calculator

Lorraine Moller winning Osaka Marathon 1986

"Marathon running, historically perceived as testing the physiologic limits of human endurance, has become increasingly popular even among recreational runners. Of those runners who test their endurance by racing the marathon distance, however, more than two in five report ‘hitting the wall,’ the rapid onset of severe fatigue and inability to maintain a high-intensity pace, resulting from the near-complete depletion of carbohydrate stores in the leg muscles and liver. An apparent paradox of long-distance running is that even the leanest athletes store enough fat to power back-to-back marathons, yet small carbohydrate reservoirs can nevertheless catastrophically limit performance in endurance exercise.

In this study I develop and validate a mathematical model that facilitates computation of personalized estimates of the distances at which runners will exhaust their carbohydrate stores while running at selected paces. In addition, I provide a systematic approach to estimating personalized maximum speeds at which runners can safely complete a marathon, based on accessible physiologic parameters such as heart rate and running speed. This analysis provides a quantitative basis for improving the safety and optimizing the performance of endurance runners, evaluating midrace fueling requirements, and estimating limits of performance in human endurance running, for elite and recreational runners alike."
B. I. Rapoport, published in PLoS Computational Biology in October 2010 

 _______________________________

Gary:
Marathon runners:  Please try out this running endurance calculator here and let me know how it goes.  Thanks.
_______________________________________

About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.  Please give me your support by subscribing to my free email updates. Please shop at my Online Store. Please encourage your family and friends to do the same. While we may not always be able to compete with the big operators on price, we aim to more than compensate through personal service!


Your email address:

Powered by FeedBlitz

Do you have a question?  Email Gary: gary@myotec.co.nz. Include any relevant background information to your question.  Please be patient and be aware that I may not be able to answer every inquiry in detail, depending on workloads (My paying clients take precedence!). I will either reply by email or, most likely, by way of an article (Personal identifying details will be removed before publication).