Hello and welcome to the ESG Fitness Podcast.

Today's podcast is about something I don't think I have spoken about on the podcast before, which is exciting.

And it was a question from the Commit to Six check-ins, but I didn't want to do it with Andy and Shona because I thought they might find it

quite boring me just talking for ages and I thought actually it would be quite cool to go into

a little bit more detail on it so the question is what makes someone good at marathon running

so like what dictates performance there and I guess we could look more broadly at this

as what dictates endurance performance. And there are three main factors to this. So number one is your

V-O-2 max. Number two is your running or exercise economy. And number three is the percentage of your

VO2 max that you can sustain. And I'll come on to that in a second. So if we start with V02 Max,

your VOT max is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption. And it's measured by graded

exercise that progressively increases. So it's usually either running or on a bike, but maybe on

like a rowing egg, you could do it as well. And you measure the oxygen and carbon dioxide exhaled.

And the point at which you reach your VO2 max isn't necessarily exhaustion, which most people think. It's your VO2 max point is reached when

oxygen consumption remains the same, so steady, despite an increase in workload. And this is because

this is a sign that you are now predominantly using anaerobic metabolism. And the amount of exercise

you could maintain at V-O-2 max or above above VO2 max is pretty finite because you start to get

quite a lot of metabolic buildup. You'll know the feeling if you've ever tried to exercise at that

higher intensity for any given period of time.

And what matters for performance is the speed at which you are running or cycling or whatever you're doing at V02 max.

So in untrained individuals, V02 max usually increases as part of your adaptations to aerobic or endurance training.

But in trained individuals or like professional athletes, you're unlikely to see much difference

in V-O-2 max. So for example, most of the marathon runners, say at the World Championships or the Olympic Games,

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