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Running Tech: It’s All In the Numbers

Running tech

For the last 100 or so years of modern marathoning, crucial training and racing decisions have been made almost entirely on feel. In the next few years, with the evolution of wearable tech and the use of advanced analytics, all of this is bound to change

Running tech

You’re 25K into your marathon.

You’re feeling good – better than you’d expected this far into the race – and you start thinking that maybe you should adjust your pre-race plan. A runner who looks to be around the same age and ability level as you passes you out of the blue. You’re tempted to go with them, challenge yourself and see if you can be carried to a whole new level. All those months of training indicated one outcome, but in this moment you are wondering if maybe there is more in your tank than you’d previously thought.

Up ahead in that same race is the elite pack. For 35k, 10 of the finest marathoners in the world are running in unison. Some are content to wait for a sprint finish; others are quietly suffering, barely able to hang on, trying to decide if it’d be wiser to drop back; one runner feels good right now but knows that, based on previous races, they tend to fade in the final moments and struggle with a kick. That runner must decide if now is that decisive moment for them: break the group open and hope that they don’t match the move, or sit and wait a little longer.

For the last 100 or so years of modern marathoning, both of these crucial decisions have been made entirely on feel. As runners, we’ve come to trust our intuition, even if, statistically speaking, it’s really just a coin toss. Both elites and recreational runners achieve huge breakthroughs and suffer miserable failures for the same reason: we make a lot of emotional decisions in a race. Sometimes, going with your gut pays off. But often you cap off a hard season of training with a less than satisfying goal race due to poor decision-making.

In the next few years, all of this is bound to change, says Ming-Chang Tsai, a former Olympic rower who currently works as a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Health and Performance Laboratory.

“When Mo Farah won the 10,000m at the 2012 Olympics, he finished that last 400m at an incredible pace, but it still wasn’t enough to drain his fuel tank,” says Tsai. “You can’t run fast enough to drain that in the last lap of a race. If his competitors knew when to challenge him earlier in the race, he would not have seemed so unbeatable.”

The “fuel tank” analogy is something that Tsai comes back to many times during our conversation. Tsai is developing a test similar to the VO2 max or lactate threshold test that will be able to pin-point the size and just how each athlete’s fuel tank functions – whether it’s Mo Farah’s fuel tank or your fuel tank.

Sure, performance testing has been around for years. But advanced analytics, the Moneyball-style evaluation of fine grain statistics, is not currently being used in distance running. “But it should be,” says Tsai, who has partnered with the Fields Institute in U of T’s mathematics department to see if advanced number crunching can produce strong predictive models for sports other than the big money leagues like MLB and the NBA.

“This data could be particularly powerful in tactical races,” Tsai points out. “It’s the type of strategic racing where time is not a factor and winning is all that matters, such as in the Olympics.” In these races, Tsai argues, that knowing in real-time where your fuel tank gauge is will allow you to know how to strategize most efficiently. “At some point, you should be able to go all out and empty that tank to maximize your performance.”

Tsai envisions a very different runner in just a few years. The gear of the future will have access points on the body for gathering output data in real time. “The current wearable tech products are just the beginning of what’s possible,” Tsai says. Having access to that data in the moment will become a key factor in performance, Tsai believes. First for elites, but inevitably for the rest of the field as well.

Running techRight now, Tsai is developing these protocols. He’s currently testing on the Canadian national rugby team, monitoring players in real time so that coaches never make a tactical error. He’s carried his fuel tank analogy over so you can see on a computer on the sidelines who’s fatigued and who’s fresh. That data can be cross-referenced with months (and eventually years) worth of information about how a player performs in a variety of situations. Coaches can then make snap judgments about substitutions and specific strategies based on that plethora of data, all on the fly from the sideline. Eventually, much of it could even become automated, using predictive algorithms based on more mathematical analysis than could be done by a coaching staff in the moment. And this could be applied to elite runners during critical moments in a race. Eventually, just as we all own a GPS watch today, the future Garmin may very well give us detailed feedback as to what we should do in that critical point of a race in order to run that perfect PB.

“It will be like a video game,” says Tsai – only you’re using game theory, statistical modelling and wearable tech to play yourself.

Right now, the average runner has access to data through technologies that even elites didn’t have just a decade ago. Almost every runner has a GPS watch, and many use heart rate monitors as well. Coupled with an app like Strava or Garmin Connect, that data starts to reveal patterns. And with big players realizing that personal health and data collection is an untapped marketplace, devices are emerging that can help runners understand every physiological moment of their lives. “Now with devices like FitBit and the Apple Watch, you can track even when you aren’t training,” Tsai points out. Companies like Google and Apple getting involved in wearable tech will expedite this evolution. Software developers can partner with people like Tsai in order to unlock the full potential of the hardware in a smart watch so that runners can acquire that feedback in real time.

For now, we have access to all this data, but recreational runners, and even many elites according to Tsai, are left sifting through the numbers ourselves, trying to make sense of it all. “Right now, In theory, you could figure out how to train better and how to maximize your performance,” Tsai says, pointing out that we’re actually living in a time just before a significant tech revolution. “But the average person would struggle to put this all together. If you’re not immersed in this field of study, it can be overwhelming figuring out what all these numbers mean,” says Tsai. “Even coaches can be confused by these numbers. Most coaches are not experts in physiology or data analysis, of course. They are going on what has worked for them in the past, or what their coach did when they were athletes themselves.” Even with all this access to fine grain details, it’s the interpretation of this data that’s the big question mark. “Interpreting the numbers incorrectly can produce very bad outcomes,” Tsai warns.

So, what are the major data points that are useful for the average person?

“Any physiological test like VO2, lactate, a power test – with all these tests you are just trying to define the separation of the aerobic and anaerobic systems,” Tsai explains. “With VO2, you’re looking for metabolic responses to the air you breathe in. Lactate is quantifying the byproduct of output, which is lactate, to see the breaking point, which is the point between the aerobic and anaerobic systems.” Tsai’s lab offers these costly tests, but he points out that only doing them sporadically is basically pointless. “It’d be like running one 5K and deciding that it’s going to be how you decide your all-time PB at that distance.”

Tsai has been working on a basic test that works for everyone. “What I came up with is extremely simple: all you need is a gps watch, about 500 m to run on without interruption and two minutes to define your aerobic and anaerobic zones. From that, you can figure out your tempo pace and various other paces,” Tsai says. And the best part is that, because it’s so short and easy to recover from, Tsai says that runners can do this test very regularly in order to track variation. “And that’s the key to all this data – getting feedback regularly and, of course, understanding what it all means.”

At some point in the near future, you’ll be at that 25k mark in the marathon. Instead of going with your gut, you’ll be able to look at your watch and get a real-time understanding of what you should actually do to be the most successful. We’re on the precipice of a sea change in how we understand our bodies and minds as it relates to performance. Until then, we are left trying to figure out all that data leading up to that crucial moment in a goal race, and, of course, making what amounts to a coin toss decision.

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