My Running Training Running Training zones calculator

Running

You can calculate your Running Training Zones based on your Max. Heart Rate, or the heart rate at the Aerobic/Anaerobic Threshold (LT). Alternatively you can enter them manually, for example when you have established them in a lab test.

2PEAK will use the Zones you saved to analyze the Power- or Heart Rate data you upload.

This are the zones that are currently saved for you:

Calculate new Running Training Zones

based on Heart Rate: for Max bpm
based on Speed: for MAS km/h

My Running Training Coach gallery

2PEAK is proud to be associated with the following world class coaches which are at your disopsal:

Olivier Bernhard

to the training plan of the coach >> - 5 x Ironman Switzerland Champion
- 8 x Powerman Zofingen Champion
- 3 x Duathlon World Champion
Languages:
English
German
Sports:
Cycling
Running
Triathlon

Benoit Nave

Benoit probably best embodies 2PEAK's wholistic approach not only to training but to life and wellbeing in general. Benoit is an experienced osteopath and physiologist who lives in Annecy, France. Benoit knows both sides of the sport: experiences as an athlete as well as coach form the base for his innovative training and nutrition approach. After 8 years as an elite road cyclist, he was selected in 1992 for the French national Olympic team. 1998 Benoit joined the Volvo/Cannondale team, the winnigest team in mountain bike history as its coach and amassed with them an unprecedented 76 World Cup victories, 15 Overall World Cup Titles, 10 World Championships and 2 Olympic medals. Dr. Nave has treated Armstrong for his back injuries following his bad crash in the Dauphiné Liberé in 2003. Benoit, has worked with top athletes like mountain bikers like 2004 World Cup champ Christophe Sauser, 2PEAK diarist Kashi Leuchs, Athens Olympics dual gold medalist Hicham El-Guerrouj and Australian cyclist Cadel Evans. Languages:
English
French
Sports:
Cycling
Running
Triathlon

Urban Schumacher

Phys Ed. Teacher ETH
IT specialist UniZH
Sports diagnostic specialist Sport Clinic Zürich
Former coach of the Swiss Tri federation.
Expert for Respeiration-/ Altitude simulation (IHT) - Winner 7-Days Gigathlon
- Winner 1-Day Gigathlon
- Winner Trans Swiss Triathlon
- Several IronMan top placings Languages:
English
German
Sports:
Cycling
Running
Triathlon
Gigathlon

Richard Umberg

Swiss Olympic Coach dipl. I+II. Former coach of the Swiss athletic track and field federation. Member of the expert group endurance sports within Swiss Olympic. Former Swiss record holder in the maarthon with a time of 2:13:37 Coach of the late Franziska Rochat-Moser, winner of the NYC marathon 1997 and runner up at the Boston marathon 1999. Languages:
German
Sports:
Running

Philippe Martin

Swiss Olympic Coach dipl. I+II 12 years experience as a coach in the service of the Swiss Traithlon Federation Expert Swimmcoach Languages:
English
German
French
Sports:
Triathlon
To the personal training packages >>To the personal training packages >>To the personal training packages >>To the personal training packages >>To the personal training packages >>

My Running Training 2PEAK.com - Nutrition

EAT 2 PEAK: Planned Nutrition

Nutrition matters, as we learned that "you are what you eat". The truth of this ancient saying becomes even more significant as every cell in our body is replaced every six months! This means that the quality of your food will determine the quality of your body's "construction". Or in other words: eat junk and your body will be made of junk!

So far, nutrition and sports nutrition have kept to a strictly quantitative approach, assuming that if only the exact quantities needed of each nutritional element are provided, the organism will function perfectly. Only focusing on what the food brings to the body, without taking into consideration its further assimilation, is an insufficient approach to nutrition. This "approach error" in sports nutrition, causes a great number of athletes to continue to suffer from deficiencies, disease, chronic wounds or over-training, in spite of a very rational training program.

A qualitative approach to sports nutrition helps the organism to optimize the assimilation of different vital elements and nutrients, reducing the digestive time, sparing your organism an important supplementary fatigue. It may considerably diminish fermentation and putrefaction, possible sources of slow and progressive intoxication of the purifying systems.

From hunter and gatherer to athlete

The ambivalent « luxury » of eating many different types of food during the same meal is a relatively new habit, typically introduced as little as just 200 years ago. However, the human stomach has adapted over millions of years to digest according to our ancestor's lifestyle. As they were hunters and gatherers their diet consisted of berries or roots (carbohydrates) for most days until they were able to hunt some meat (proteins). This, of course, resulted in a very dissociated digestion. Our digestion has become much more complicated, not just because of the sheer volume, but also because we often mix carbs with proteins during a meal. Carbo digestion requires acids, while proteins get digested with bases, which as you know are two substances that neutralize each other. The result - a much longer and more complex digestion process. Many nutritionists refer to our digestion system as in a state of « shock » due to a deficit in digestive juice. Worse still, we live with inadequate digestion sometimes from our early childhood! Athletes cannot afford to waste lots of precious energy with a lengthy inefficient digestive process, one that does not allow for proper assimilation of important nutrients and, especially important, one that does not allow for detoxification of the intestine.

You can't cheat your digestive system

The practical approach consists in providing the right nutritional combination at the most useful moment for the body. This is a guarantee for keeping the energy, hormonal and immune systems balanced. Wanting to restore one of these three without taking into account the others would be totally illusory. This approach seeks to respect the reality of our digestive - that is enzymatic - potential, which is plainly the result of 3 million years of adapting, or formatting. Only the food having constituted the formatting base can be transformed into useful sub-products for our cells (try to make your PC read a diskette formatted for MAC).

Organizing and timing nutrients, supplements, sport drinks and gels is one of the keys to optimizing the main body balances (energetic, immune, hormonal). Some important windows have to be respected so that these balances won't be affected on the short and long terms. Imbalances would allow injuries, illness and fatigue to happen, like it often does to expert or pro athletes. In fact this "chrono-nutrition" will help the body to stay healthy instead of desperately trying to stay "border line" like many athletes do.

The 2PEAK Nutrition Plan is a practical manual that specifies when, what kind and which amount of nutrients are needed to keep the body in balance and ideally fueled while allowing for optimum recovery. You will find your 2PEAK Nutrition Plan inserted into the day view of your Running Training Plan specifying exactly when and how much of which nutrient to eat. Your goals (races), the volume and intensity of your work outs will generate your individual diet. The Nutrition Plan is part of the Gold Package or is an option with the Silver Package.

Make the most out of your potential. Discover the extra push that the specific 2PEAK fuel program will give you.

2PEAK - Your Personal Trainer

My Running Training Race nutrition and hydration, carboloading

PROPER RACE NUTRITION & HYDRATION

THE PURPOSE

The first one is to get to the start line with the optimal storage of glycogen in your muscles and liver. The second is to prevent hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar level) during the effort.
In two steps we need first to optimize our potential to store, and to then to release stored energy effectively.

I. STORE (or loading)

Super Compensation

Over the past decades, Scandinavians have used a method, which consisted in a weeklong special regimen. It starts with an exhaustive training session one week before the race, while athletes consume a low-carbohydrate diet, yet continued exercising, to totally deplete muscle glycogen stores. Then, 3 days before competition, athletes rest and eat a high-carbohydrate diet to promote glycogen super compensation.

This regimen has many drawbacks:

the long training sessions necessary to reach a complete depletion of stores, while at the same time the athlete is already in a carbohydrate-low phase, can hardly be done with a pace close to that of the competition, therefore a sufficiently selective depletion of muscle fibers can not necessarily be obtained. considerable side effects such as nervous tiredness, hormonal disturbances, muscular breakage, can prejudice a successful race.

This has led to the insight that the super compensation of glycogen reserves can be obtained by limiting the diet to the carbohydrate-rich phase and still gets an optimal performance.

We know today, that endurance training is the primary stimulus for increased muscle glycogen synthesis. Endurance training increases the activity of the glycogen synthesis, and the enzyme responsible for glycogen storage. But timing is equally important! Today we know to have some very specific body adaptations, some metabolic windows.

The Window

It should be known that the starchy foods and leguminous plants (principal sources of carbohydrates in our food) can be stored in a greater proportion, in the form of muscular glycogen, after a significant depletion of stores. In the few hours (there is a 4 to 6 hours optimal window after the end of the effort) following a long and/or intense effort, which will have drawn largely from the muscular glycogen reserves, the conditions are thus favorable. When the glycogen reserves under these preconditions are exhausted, the muscular cells will then much more easily restore glycogen.

The Solution: 2PEAK Loading

Assuming race day is a Sunday. ( road race, 10k run, X-C ski , marathon, triathlon or whatever endurance sport) here is how we should proceed in detail:

Wednesday: a long workout (one to three-or more- hours, depending on your sport, try to include 1-3 intervals at competition pace). Make sure to avoid starchy foods (carbohydrates) the night before in order to maximize the drain of your glycogen stores. As soon as you are back from your long workout, a recovery drink will enable you to start to replenish glycogen while re-hydrating the muscle cells. Then, the first solid food will be introduced, between 1 and 2 hours after the end of the effort* This meal will have to be also rich in carbohydrates and possibly alkaline (in order to bind the acids, dried fruits or bananas for example). The following meal or two will have to be carbohydrate dominant, potatoes (very alkaline food) and leguminous plants (rich in fiber and mineral) will be very welcome.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday will be used to relax in every sense. After each, even recovery workouts, athletes will consume a light carbohydrate meal. All meals will still be carbo predominant. But, during these last three days we will avoid too many fiber-rich foods to prevent any digestive disorder.

Hint: lots of pasta on Saturday evening (pasta party etc.) would be at the same time useless and prejudicial for the performance on the following day. Especially for well-trained athletes who have exceptional and specific body adaptations. Your were pasta-partying since Wednesday, on Saturday evening you are too late for the dance!! We explain: indeed, not having carried out long and/or intense training this day, you would store only a small proportion of your starchy foods or other carbohydrates in the form of glycogen, but, in addition, the carbohydrates would be transformed then into fat, causing a long and arduous work to your digestive system. On top of this, because every gram of carbohydrate carries 2.7 grams of water with it, you will perturb the venous and lymphatic pressures and thus all the extra cellular circulation of your body, by modifying the oncotic pressure. Not only you would get to the start line the next morning with a few more grams of fat but also with one or two kilos of additional dead weight, retained in the form of water in the extra-cellular tissues because of the sudden modification of these famous venous and lymphatic pressures. Cyclists know this phenomenon perfectly when they get up in the morning feeling to have "two posts" in the place of the legs.

*It takes sometime before enough of the blood volume gets back to the digestive territory. Before getting a carbo meal after any kind of hard/long effort, you have to wait for about 1 hour after the end of hard effort itself. If you finish a hard training and then slow-down for 15’, then you can start your meal 45’ after the end of the slow-down.

The Last Meal

Athletes know it, there is a minimal time to respect between the last meal and the beginning of the race. This time is obviously variable according to the individuals and especially of their anxiety level, but also variable depending on the intensity of the effort at the start and during competition. For some of us, nothing seems to pass on race day morning. For others, two hours after the end of the meal, the stomach feels totally empty. If the start of the race is very early morning it will then be necessary to choose more or less specific types of food according to whether you belong to one or the other of the categories. For those individuals with a tied stomach, a liquid food will be perhaps most suitable. For the others, a low glycemic index starchy food (to prevent any hypoglycemia) plus a slight protein contribution approximately three to four hours before the departure is most appropriate.

If the athlete does not compete at a very high level or if the early part of the race does not require a high output or if the race starts in the evening, then the athlete should get a normal breakfast and a pre-race meal, like those below, 3-4 hours before the start. This will be followed by a pre-race drink which the athlete will absorb at a rate of a mouthful approximately every twenty minutes.

These strategies will enable everyone in every situation to approach the departure with a light stomach and the hepatic glycogen (which ensures the maintenance of the blood sugar level, which thus warns you of hypoglycemia) at its best level.

The last meal: 2 solutions

1) A traditional meal: cereals like millet, spelt, cooked amaranth or just soaked in some soy milk, rice- or any other non dairy drink , and slightly sweetened with fructose, will make the deal perfect. You might choose to prepare cereals the day before and to consume them at ambient temperature.

2)A specific pre-race drink

II. RELEASE (race fueling)

The Purpose

Blood glucose level have to be extremely consistent for an important reason. Glucose is the fuel for the nervous system including the brain. That’s why hypoglycemia leads to dizziness! For an athlete a small decrease in the blood glucose level and the brain turns down all the “racing functions” and installs a safety system to protect the main organ: itself.

The goals of fueling during the effort is, first and foremost, to prevent hypoglycemia (decrease of the blood sugar rate by depletion of the hepatic and muscular glycogen) and re-hydration, and then to delay the reduction in stores of muscular glycogen and also to prevent a sharp reduction of branched chained amino acids in the blood. A significant modification of these parameters automatically involves a reduction in the physical capacity and thus in the intensity which the athlete can support, and also on the easiness of his recovery. The contribution of a well conceived combination of pre-race supplements and energy drink and/or gel must satisfy the various needs enumerated above thus insuring an optimum effort until the very end of the race.

The Limitations

During a race effort, the digestive system gets less blood stream. In addition, it is also necessary to take into account the capacities of the stomach to drain a given quantity of liquids, liquids whose concentrations in nutritive elements and minerals can also be very variable. To solve this equation, we must pay attention to certain principles of digestive physiology. The stomach lets a liquid pass through its wall more quickly if the concentration of mineral element of the liquid is lower than that observed in blood. This principle is governed by the difference in osmotic pressure. A drink intended to be absorbed during the effort must thus be hypo-concentrated compared to the blood concentrations. But we also know that a minimal contribution in carbohydrates is essential to maintain the level of performance. Note that a rising concentration in carbohydrates involves a deceleration of gastric draining as a consequence. A solution of glucose slightly osmolar (139 mmol/L) leaves the stomach in 20 min, whereas the same volume introduced with a osmolarity of 834 mmol/L requires close to 2h! After many studies, we now know that the maltodextrines do not seem to be absorbed more quickly, on the other hand the fructose with reasonable concentrations appears to be absorbed more quickly than glucose. We also know, that a liquid food taken by small regular mouthfuls shouldn’t cause digestive troubles contrary to the solids which, for the efforts above 80 % of VO2max see their assimilation very disturbed. In other words, bars sandwiches etc. are a no go (ask your stomach!) for efforts above 80% of VO2max.

The Solution: 2PEAK Fueling

Where does this leave us? The only way out is a sport drink with little pronounced taste, containing fructose, glucose and maltodextrines, in concentrations from 40 to 80 g/l (depending on the temperature), hypotonic on mineral (especially sodium), absorbed at the rate of 50 to 80 cl./hour**. This quantity of liquid can appear low, however it is still a higher than average quantity of liquid absorbed according to a survey carried out with non-professional endurance athletes. Although this represents only one small mouthful every 10 to 15 minutes it is by drinking it that you fuel your engine, not by carrying it around on your bike or fuel belt…!

** Water can of course be consumed on top of these suggested guidelines, provided it is PLAIN water.

My Running Training Test your Maximum Aerobic Speed (MAS)

With help of the MAS-Test (Maximum Aerobic Speed) you can establish and periodically adjust your training zones defined in heart rate and speed, as well as estimate your expected times for selected races.

Perform a thorough warmup for at least 20 minutes. Then you clock your time to cover 1200m. This is best done on a 400m track, but can also be done on a flat road stretch provided you can accurately measure and mark 1200m (a bicycle fitted with a speedometer might achieve this). Run the first 2 laps at what you perceive to be 90% of your maximum possible speed and force to 100% on the last lap. Sanity check: you need to be at least as fast on the last lap then on the previous two. Please also note your maximum heart rate at the end of the test, or just read the max data saved by your heart rate monitor and enter it in the field below. The MAS test lets 2PEAK determine the intensities for your intervals. We can also predict your times for longer races. M.A.S. - over 1200m min:sec
Your maximum heart rate at the end of the test: Beats per minute