TRAINING

Fitness training for Orienteering

Troy de Haas at the World Champs in Japan during the Long Distance heats. Quite a few competitors, like Troy, were wearing hydration packs. Photo: Bob Mouatt

Introduction

Previous articles (Australian Orienteer #136 & 137) have outlined the components you need for orienteering fitness. These are a high capacity to utilize oxygen (VO2 max), the ability to run at relatively high speeds without accumulating lots of fatiguing lactic acid (a fast running speed at your Maximum Lactate Steady State) and the technique to run fast, fluently and economically in Orienteering terrain. The same principles apply to mountain bike Orienteering and throughout these articles, readers with a primary interest in cycling can replace the word running throughout.

Also as outlined previously (Australian Orienteer #138), training is a stimulus that the body responds to by making physiological adaptations and enhancements that manifest themselves as improvements in fitness. These include the functioning of the heart, composition of the blood and biochemistry of the muscles, in particular their capacity to perform the chemical reactions that harness the energy you need when running or cycling. The key to training is providing the overload that stimulates these improvements. Basically this means working your muscles and/or cardiovascular system harder than at rest and then between training sessions allowing them to recover and make the desired biochemical, physiological and morphological improvements. The key to a successful training program is to do enough hard work to optimise your fitness, but not too much, otherwise you risk overtraining which can cause a decline in performance, as well as injury and illness. It is also important to do the kind of training that will target the weakest aspect of your fitness, as in this way you are liable to get the greatest performance gains from the amount of time and effort you invest.

Steady running

The most basic form of training for endurance events is comfortable steady state running. This is undertaken at the kind of submaximal speed that you can sustain without having to push yourself too hard. So this would be going out for a steady run during which your heart rate and breathing increase to a steady level and are maintained at a working but not stressed level throughout the duration of the session. Figure 1 illustrates a runner’s heart rate during one of these sessions, in which their heart rate is around 140 bpm and fluctuates up or down by about 10 beats as they may encounter a hill or easier part of their route.

During this kind of session you will have increased your energy use and oxygen consumption. But only to a level that your heart, lungs, blood and muscles can easily match. Typically this is around 65 – 80% of your maximum heart rate and at this intensity you won’t accumulate fatiguing levels of lactic acid. Studies using untrained or slightly trained individuals have shown regular training of this sort increases VO2max largely through the body increasing its capacity to deliver oxygen to the muscles, i.e. adaptations to the heart and blood, coupled with an increased oxygen utilisation by the muscles (Green et al, 1990 & 1991). So undertaking this kind of training for 30 - 70 minutes, 3 - 5 times a week will improve your fitness and form a good foundation.

However, once you have a attained a reasonably good VO2 max through this kind of regular steady running, you will reach a point of diminishing returns, whereby fairly large additional volumes of steady running will produce only small additional increases in VO2max and performance. This is the point at which you may wish to consider including different training sessions into your schedule, particularly interval training and running at your maximum lactate steady state (MLSS). Whilst these may not promote a further substantial increase in your VO2max they will increase your running performance and endurance. This is because their effect is upon the biochemistry of your muscles, how they deal with the oxygen you’re delivering to them via the blood and how they deal with the waste products produced. Like any system, your fitness is only as good as its weakest link, and once you

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have a good VO2 max it’s probably not going to be your weakness, in which case you’ll need to consider focusing upon other aspects of your physiology.

So if you aspire to greater levels of fitness, doing more of the same steady running may only produce relatively small improvements in endurance performance or VO2 max (Billat et al 2002) if any (Laursen and Jenkins 2002). Indeed the improvements due to additional volumes of steady running that have been recorded in already trained endurance runners appear to be due to improvements in running economy (being able to run at the same speed whilst using less oxygen, due to not ‘wasting it’ on unnecessary muscular actions etc). So an alternative strategy to simply running more kms is to replace one or more of your steady running sessions with an alternative such as high intensity intervals and running at your MLSS.

This is not to dismiss the potential benefit of additional volumes of steady running since it may be important to those at the very top of our sport who are already in peak fitness, and want to find those extra seconds, and have the time to do it. But for most people who may have a very limited amount of training time, greater benefit per hour spent training may be gained from these alternative higher intensity sessions, with additional volumes of training only being considered after these other forms of training are already established within their weekly schedule.

Running at MLSS

Running speed at Maximum Lactate Steady State (MLSS) is the fastest speed that you can maintain without a continual increase in lactate concentration, which would ultimately cause you to slow down or stop due to fatigue. The actual concentration of lactate at this speed varies considerably between individuals and can be as low as 2 mmol/L or as high as 8 mmol/L. Running at your MLSS speed will feel like a hard run and you wouldn’t want to do it everyday. Regular training at this intensity can produce further small increases in VO2max and the running speed of your MLSS, but more significantly the training increases the amount of time you can maintain that speed. With studies reporting in already well trained runners average pre-training MLSS durations of 44 minutes, improving to 63 minutes after 6 weeks of including MLSS training into their weekly regimen (Billat et al 2004). For an orienteer, being able to sustain your racing speed in the last quarter of an event may be just the kind of improvement you’re looking for, so this could be the session you need to add to your weekly schedule.

If you regularly participate in street Orienteering, in which you run hard throughout the event, you may well be already doing a MLSS session, as it’s liable to be at this kind of intensity.

High Intensity Intervals

The purpose of high intensity interval training is to repeatedly stress the physiological systems at a level greater than would occur during lower intensity training such as steady running. It therefore poses a greater stimulus for the muscles and cardiovascular system to make the adaptations needed to produce further improvements in fitness. The format of a high intensity interval session involves repeated phases of fast running at speeds that you would be unable to sustain for very long. These would generally be close to or even faster than the speed that elicits your VO2max and is therefore very tiring. Each effort is followed by a recovery period, usually of steady jogging, and then the effort is repeated.

The exact length of each effort is a matter of some debate, with some authorities presenting evidence that 15 seconds of hard running, followed by a similar jog recovery is effective, whilst at the other extreme, others advocate 5 minutes of effort with around 2 and a half minutes jog recovery. Both are probably effective and you may select different durations each session to provide variety. An example of a runner’s heart rate response during an interval session is presented in Figure 2. In this session they undertake 12 efforts, during which their heart rate peaks at about 180 bpm at the end of each effort and then falls to about 130 bpm during the recovery. The vertical lines and numbers indicate the beginning and end of each effort.

If you are a novice at intervals, then in your first session, the total duration of effort should be kept to a maximum of 10 minutes. If you find this doesn’t cause any prolonged aches or discomfort you can increase the total duration of effort either by increasing the number or the duration of each one in subsequent sessions.

Interval sessions may be performed in a very structured format, with predetermined durations for each effort such as 10 sets of 2-minute efforts with 1-minute jog recovery between each. If doing this in a group try using some bush or an open area in which the slower runners have the opportunity to cut corners, otherwise they simply get more and more fatigued and left behind as they struggle to catch up in the recovery jog. Another alternative is to try a form of parlauf relay in which you have a circuit with half the runners going off first and then handing over to the next set at the end of the first circuit. As the second group of runners complete their first circuit they hand over to the first group again, with the runner who was back first going off first. So basically as you complete each circuit you get into the queue ready to go off again. You could repeat this for a set duration of 20 or 30 minutes.

Fartlek is a less formal form of intervals, which is more ‘ go as you please’ with each person taking a chance to be a leader and deciding when to start the next effort and how long to make it. This can be fitted in to suit the local terrain, such as finishing at the top of a hill, or a path junction. Running repetitive hills are another form of interval training and a very relevant aspect of many bush Orienteering events. Find a hill or group of hills that suit your needs. A mixture of gentle slopes that permit fairly fast running as well as steep hillsides are a good combination and you’ll encounter both in events. As previously indicated, if your main priority is bush Orienteering then try and spend some of this training time off-road, as the practice will improve your running technique across uneven ground.

The main body of an interval session should be preceded by a 5 – 10 minute warmup consisting of steady jogging and stretching. At the end of the set of intervals the session should conclude likewise with 5 – 10 minutes of steady jogging and stretching.

In moderately trained runners, interval training has been demonstrated to improve VO2 max, running economy, and the maximum speed they were able to run at without accumulating lactic acid to fatiguing levels (MLSS). Whereas in highly trained runners, interval training may not improve VO2 max but does improve running economy, which means that higher running speeds can be achieved at VO2 max and also faster speeds at MLSS (Demarle et al 2003).

As a note of caution, interval training is hard work, and if attaining the higher echelons of performance are not your priority and hard training not to your taste, you may be advised to stick to steady running and cycling sessions. As indicated above these will still provide a reasonably good level of fitness, as well as conveying all the health benefits of cardiovascular exercise. Additionally, interval training should be introduced gradually as it can be quite punishing on the body and if you try to do too much too soon, you may end up with unwanted aches and strains.

Figure 2

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Norway’s winning Men’s Relay team at the World Champs, Holger Hott Johansen, Øystein Kristiansen and Jørgen Rostrup.

Heart rate monitors

With the advent of readily available heart rate monitors there has been a culture of using heart rate to determine appropriate exercise intensities (running or cycling speed). This can be a very useful and informative method of optimising your training, if you know what your maximum heart rate is and what your heart rate is at your lactate threshold and maximum lactate steady state (MLSS). Unfortunately all this detailed information can only be gained by undertaking a physiological assessment at a venue such as an accredited sport science laboratory. Consequently instead of using individualised and precise heart rates to determine exercise intensity there has been a reliance upon using the values of population averages, which typically suggest that a person’s maximum heart rate is 220 – age or some similar algorithm, and that their steady training zone being around 65 – 80% of this, MLSS heart rates being at the upper end of this zone and interval training elevating the heart rate above it.

Unfortunately, what these predictive algorithms don’t account for is the vast variation in the population. As even between athletes of a similar age, standard and fitness, their maximum heart rates can differ by more than 20 bpm. Likewise their heart rates at their lactate threshold and training zones can also differ by more than 20 bpm. So the message is that heart rate monitors can be useful, but you must relate the data to yourself and not be dictated too much by values for population averages. Even if you haven’t undergone an extensive physiological assessment, and few will have, you can at least use your own experiences to identify what your heart rate peaks at going hard uphill during a tough event, what you can maintain it at for 15 minutes during a hard training run and what it is during an easy session. Whilst obviously not precise in the laboratory sense these will give you some indication of what your maximum, lactate steady state and aerobic training zone heart rates are, and will probably be a more accurate reflection than the population average for your age.

Summary

With the right training your fitness will improve and you will be able to complete your events faster. Putting together the right combination of sessions each week and each month is important. Your training needs to target your weaknesses and ensure maximum performance gains for the time spent training. Your sessions must also reflect the background against which you are training, including school/college/university/work demands, personal issues and other aspects of your health. Each of these may require an amendment in your training regimen and it is important to adjust your training accordingly. Also don’t forget to spend time on your technical and mental skills. As with all sports, each of these components must be worked on if you are to achieve your potential, as your performance will be limited by your weakest one.

References

Billat V, Demarle A, Paiva M & Koralsztein JP (2002). Effect of training on the physiological factors of performance in elite marathon runners (males and females). International Journal of Sports Medicine, 23:336341. Billat V, Sirvent P, Lepretre PM & Koralsztein JP (2004). Training effect on performance, substrate balance and blood lactate concentration at maximal lactate steady state in master endurance-runners. Pflugers Archiv - European Journal of Physiology, 446, 875-883. Demarle AP, Heugas AM, Slawinski JJ, Tricot VM, Koralsztein JP & Billat VL (2003). Whichever the initial training status, any increase in velocity a lactate threshold appears as a major factor in improved time to exhaustion at the same severe velocity after training. Archives of Physiology and Biochemistry, 111: 167-176. Green HJ, Jones LL & Painter DC (1990). Effects of short-term training on cardiac function during prolonged exercise. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 22: 488-493. Green HJ, Jones LL, Houston ME et al (1991). Early adaptations in gas exchange, cardiac function and haematology to prolonged exercise training in man. Eur J Appl Physiol, 63: 17-23. Laursen PB & Jenkins DG (2002). The scientific basis for high-intensity interval training: optimising training programmes and maximising performance in highly trained endurance athletes. Sports Medicine, 32(1): 53-73.

Professor Steve Bird is Director, Centre for Population Health, Sunshine Hospital, Melbourne. Steve worked with the Great Britain National Orienteering Squad for over 10 years.

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Punching on the Fly

Adrian Jackson (World MTB-O Champion)

I have developed this method of punching on the move to save time at controls - the fact it makes you look cool in front of spectators is just a bonus! If you can save around 2 seconds for each control you don’t have to stop at, the time saving adds up quickly – that’s 30 secs for 15 controls. Punching without stopping may look hard, but its very simple, even if you have minimal MTB skills. If you can ride one handed, and track stand (balance at a standstill) for just a few seconds then you should be able to master this technique.

1. Approach

Know before you see the control which way you have to exit the control, and work out if you have to turn around. When you see the control decide wether you will attempt to punch on the go, or stop and put a foot down. Slow down so you are travelling at running pace about 10m away from the control, then reach down and get your SI stick in the appropriate hand.

2. At control

Slow yourself (with whichever brake you are still holding after picking up your SI stick) so you arrive at the control at about walking pace. Pass the control so that the stand is just outside the width of your handlebar, any further and you will have to reach too far and overbalance, any closer and you will knock the stand over! As you approach the control, be looking at the SI unit, that’s your target!

Setup:

The best place to mount your SI stick is in the middle of your bike, somewhere near the stem. I like it on the back of the stem as it’s easy to see and reach. Other places I have seen that look good too are on top of the stem or on the top tube near the headset. Having some sort of retractor device is also definitely an advantage. The type that I and most other elites use is made for business people with security passes or the like. They are compact and have a thin (but strong) chord that is easily pulled out and that snaps back when let go. You have to hunt around to find them, but when you do, buy the store out and sell them to your MTB-O friends!

Notes:

This method is only recommended for punching controls where the approach is uphill, flat or slight downhill, i.e. when approaching without great speed. In fact this method will save you the most time on controls when approaching uphill. Stopping to punch and then remounting uphill can be difficult and time consuming.

When you are coming in fast it is quicker to slow down quickly with both brakes and put one foot down to punch. Also, if you have to turn your bike around to exit it is quicker to put one foot down, punch, pivot yourself and your bike and then remount.

3. Punching

Be looking at the SI unit, and as the stand draws level with your handlebar, reach forward and put your stick in. Keep rolling forward at slow walking pace, this way by the time the stick has registered your hand will be level with your saddle. Do not put your hand on the SI unit or stand to use them for support, they are often not very stable.

4. Leaving

Once you have heard the beep and/or seen the lights flash on the SI unit, look up and pedal away, simple! Do not, however, just let go of your SI stick and let it snap back into the retractor. The SI stick and cord can get tangled in your brake lever and shifters, and repeatedly letting it snap back can crack your SI stick!