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In this email I want to explain why I spent $200 just to run on a treadmill for an hour (while wearing a mask and getting blood drawn between kilometres), what I learnt from the experience, and why you should care. 

Let’s start at the beginning…

I’ve always wanted to run fast. 

In the early days, that meant putting some shoes on and doing laps of the local neighbourhood as fast as I could. With a nasty hill at the end, this was decent training—but completely based on ‘feel’ and about as unscientific as it gets. 

You can get surprisingly fast just running on feel, but the very best athletes in the world take the opposite approach. 

Take Jakob Ingebrigtsen, for example. 

(Jakob holds the 1500 European record, 2000m world record, 3000m world record, and is a two-time Olympic gold medal winner.)

Jakob follows what people have called ‘The Norwegian Method’, which basically means he analyses literally everything you could think to analyse about his running—VO2 max, lactate thresholds, thermal regulation, heart rate, power output, nutrition and fueling, gait, and much more. 

Jakob and other data-driven athletes are focused on finding the maximum return on investment (ROI) for the hours spent training.

If these athletes can use data to figure out exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are, they can create custom training plans that will give them much better improvements in performance for the same amount of time spent training. 

Basically, they can put the same amount of time into training as their competitors—but unlock more performance gains with that time. Which, when you’re competing at the highest level, is huge.  

I’ve always been fascinated by this way of training, but I’ve never quite been sure how realistic it is for everyday people like you and me to tap into this philosophy. 

(After all, athletes like Jakob literally have entire teams of people dedicated to helping them do all this.)

So, at the start of this year, I decided to take matters into my own hands and figure out the answer to a simple question:

How does the average person get access to this same data, and is it useful?

Step 1: Figuring out what to test

I decided to focus on the two things I mentioned first on that list—VO2 max and lactate threshold testing. 

Why?

Your VO2 max is a number that tells you the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use per minute. Basically, the bigger the number, the higher the potential you have to do a lot of work fast and have sufficient oxygen flowing to muscles to keep that up. 

It’s somewhat influenced by genetics, but definitely can be improved through training—so while some people naturally have higher VO2 maxes, you’re not stuck at your current level.  

To be honest, although I thought VO2 max would be an interesting data point to have, I actually think the far more useful data comes from knowing your lactate thresholds. 

What the heck are lactate thresholds? 

Lactate is a byproduct of the body’s energy production during high-intensity exercise. If you build up too much lactate in your muscles without clearing it, your performance will drop. 

Tests usually give you your LT1 (lactate threshold 1) and LT2 (lactate threshold 2). 

LT1 vs LT2: what’s actually the difference?

LT1 is the level of intensity where lactate is being produced, but cleared just as fast. So it allows you to train for long periods of time without worrying about your lactate levels, which helps build your base aerobic engine. 

LT2 is the highest intensity you can sustain before lactate accumulates rapidly, faster than you can clear it. Once you go above LT2, fatigue ramps up fast and performance drops off.

Training below LT1 is good for recovery or if you’re more focused on mileage and volume, training at LT1 helps build your aerobic base, training around LT2 helps improve your ability to hold speed at stress, and training above LT2 is hardcore but can help your anaerobic efficiency and push your top end speed and vo2 max (but definitely shouldn’t be overdone.)

Step 2: Figuring out how to test it

I had no idea how to actually test this stuff, but I figured that there must be sports testing centres within a reasonable distance to me that I could use. After all, there are plenty of athletes who live in the part of the country I live in—and they must get their testing done somewhere. 

My Vital Metrics in Manchester looked decent, but I was more tempted by Lancaster University performance lab as it was a bit cheaper and closer. It cost about £180 (between $220 - $250 depending on exchange rate) to do a combined VO2 max and lactate threshold test, and took about 3 weeks from making an inquiry to actually being able to come in and do the test. 

I think actually going to a sports lab is always going to be the most accurate way to test these things, but you can also get this data from certain wearables. 

Newer Garmin watches will tell you both your estimated VO2 max and your estimated lactate threshold, and Whoop will tell you your estimated VO2 max. (So will Apple Watches and most other running watches.

Step 3: Testing it

I drove to the lab feeling a bit nervous—I’d been busy with work and slept from 3:30am till 10am. So not an ideal night of sleep, and I was worried my fatigue might impact my performance and results. 

I got to the lab and filled out some questions and signed a waiver (if I hurt myself while testing I wasn’t going to sue them, etc.)  

The test was simple but painful:

First, they took my resting heart rate and sampled my blood to get some baseline metrics. Then they had me hop on a treadmill, put a mask on so they could analyse my breathing, and run for 3 minutes at 8km/h, after which they gave me a minute to rest and took some more blood.

(The test was conducted at room temperature—20.5—but it felt so hot in there, especially with the mask on.)  

Then they moved the speed up to 9km/h and did the same again. We basically just repeated this until I literally couldn’t keep going. I got up to 18km/h and they told me to stop after about a minute because I was about to fall over as I tried to keep running. 

The test took about 45 minutes and it was honestly way more painful than I was expecting. But I guess the only way to test your threshold is to push you to your threshold, so I don’t know why I was surprised. 

I also learned after the test that the treadmill had been set on a 1% incline in order to mimic the impact of things like air resistance or slight changes in surface terrain when running outside. 

Step 4: What do I do with the data? Is it actually useful?

It took about a week for the lab to analyse my data and send it to me in a report. I won’t lie, some of the stuff in the report went over my head a bit and I had to use AI to decipher it. 

The takeaways were basically this:

LT1: 8:47/mile (or 5:28/km). 

LT2: 6:26/mile (or 4:00/km). 

Basically, what I learned from this test was that I should run slower than 5:28 per kilometre to work on my aerobic base, and that 4:00/km is essentially my current threshold—good for speedwork but not a pace I should be running at every day. (Although by running close to 4:00/km I can improve that threshold over time.)

VO2 max: 55

Funnily enough, this exactly matches what my Garmin was predicting prior to the test. Since the test my Garmin VO2 max has gone up to 56 so hopefully my true VO2 max has changed as well. 

(Randomly, my new Whoop says my VO2 max is 65. So I have no idea what’s happening there.)

This data point, as I predicted, doesn’t really give me much to actually do—but it will be interesting as a baseline measurement to come back and see if I’ve improved later down the line. 

All in all, would I recommend it?

To be honest, I think if you don’t mind paying the asking cost—it’s a good thing to do. I’ve been surprised by how useful knowing my lactate thresholds has been for my training over the last few weeks since the test. I’ve been using that data to guide what pace I run my easy runs and my threshold work. 

I do think I should probably retest it at regular intervals as I don’t want to keep training with this data if it gets outdated as my fitness improves, but probably once every 3 - 6 months is often enough for an amateur like me.

That’s about it for this email.

Hope you learnt something!

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Your friends,

Benji and Jacob

P.S. I gave ChatGPT my test data and asked it to predict my 5k pr based on the data. It predicted 18:45–19:30.

Is that right?

Click below to find out…