The Durable Athlete—Part I
How do you hold up?
Fitness is a loaded term. It could mean crushing long distances, having great sprint ability, or showcasing raw power. But the thread that ties it all together is durability.
We are all capable of clicking off a few miles at our desired race intensity. Or at least I hope you can. What not every athlete gets right is being able to sustain this pace, power, or effort deep into a race…some of which last multiple hours. That is what it means to be work-hardened or durable.
This week, we kick off a new series called The Durable Athlete.
Part I is going to detail some key points on durability from a new article from Zanini et. al in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sport1.
Part II will deliver some practical implications for increasing durability so that you can power through the finish line at your next endurance event.
It may sound obvious, but fatigue is the reason why your race pace feels harder at the end rather than the beginning of a race.
This is important, however, because it is not just your mind that is telling you it is getting hard. There are some key physiological markers that change dramatically under fatigued conditions.
The aforementioned paper from Zanini et. al looked at specific variables in marathon runners during a fresh state, after 90 minutes of moderate running, and after 2-hours of moderate running.
In the 90 and 120 minutes conditions…
VO2 peak (your max oxygen uptake) dropped, meaning your aerobic engine lost efficiency.
Running economy worsened, so you burned more oxygen to maintain the same pace which a costly shift.
Lactate threshold speed2 slowed by 6.6% after 120 minutes. If your fresh lactate threshold pace is 7:00 per mile, you’d feel the same burn at 7:28 per mile by the two-hour mark.
Moreover, the change between these variables at 90 and 120 minutes were non linear, meaning that the fatigue build up snowballs, especially in the athlete who lacks durability.
There are three main areas that contribute to an athlete’s durability. The following graphic lays out the training considerations to improve performance as the duration of the event, intensity of the event, or both begin to create fatigue.
We will use this framework in Part II where we will discuss the practical interplay between Stamina, Strength, and Speed as it pertains to improving durability.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sms.70076
Lactate Threshold Speed is the running pace at which your body starts to accumulate lactate in the blood faster than it can clear it, marking the transition from primarily aerobic to anaerobic energy production. It’s typically expressed as a speed (e.g., miles per hour or kilometers per hour) or pace (e.g., minutes per mile or kilometer) and occurs at a specific intensity where lactate production begins to outpace clearance, often around 80-90% of maximal heart rate for trained runners.