Have I ever told you about the engineer who almost overlooked his own progress?
Several years back, I was working with a group of engineers from Jaguar Land Rover. They’d come to me because they were tackling the Maratona to raise funds for Birmingham Children’s Hospital – a proper challenge that demanded serious preparation. I went down to JLR, used one of their motor engineering testing rooms, to set up a mobile lab to test them all and put together individual training plans for each of them.
There was one chap – a lovely guy, very much the engineer type. Mechanically minded, loved his numbers, all about having focus and data to track what he was doing. We’d started 16 weeks out from the event, done comprehensive fitness tests, and given him individually assigned heart rate targets with a bespoke training plan.
Six weeks later, when I went back to assess progress, all the lads were laughing as he walked in to see me.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Not doing that well,” he replied. “I’m not finding it any easier at all. I really don’t think I’m getting any fitter.”
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. He went on to explain that his usual 90-minute lap was causing him problems. After three or four weeks, he was finding himself getting home in 75 minutes instead of 90. But because he was so focused on the heart rate targets and durations I’d given him, he’d started adding an extra loop to keep the ride at exactly 90 minutes.
“It clearly can’t be working,” he said, “because it’s not feeling any easier.”
I had to pause for a moment. Here was an engineer – someone who understood that speed equals distance over time – completely missing what was happening to his own performance.
“Let me get this right,” I said. “Your 90-minute ride, you’re now completing in 75 minutes?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’ve had to add a loop of about 5-6 kilometres to make it that 90-minute ride. But it can’t be working because it’s just as hard as the first day I did it.”
“What’s happened to your average speed?”
“Oh, it’s gone up by about 4 kilometres per hour.”
…..Killer climbs, but stunning scenery, the Maratona is probably my favourite bike event!
The Science Behind the Story
This story perfectly illustrates something I’ve been thinking about during my morning walks lately – especially after this morning’s 5am stroll with the lunatic dog. These walks have become absolutely vital for my physical and mental well being, giving me space to think clearly about training principles that so many athletes miss.
What this engineer couldn’t see was that for the same absolute effort, he was now riding several kilometres per hour faster. It wasn’t getting any easier because we’d given him a precise heart rate target that worked his body at exactly the right level – a level that targeted his endurance and fat metabolism.
When we got him back on the scales and did proper testing, the results were remarkable. He’d lost significant body weight, increased muscle mass, and reduced body fat substantially. His VO2 max had improved dramatically, his peak power had gone up considerably, but his training zones hadn’t changed much – which was exactly what we expected in just six weeks.
The numbers were impressive: he was now riding 3-4 kilometres per hour faster for the same heart rate effort, had improved his power-to-weight ratio significantly, and his body composition had transformed. But more importantly, when the Maratona came around, he absolutely smashed it – finishing well ahead of his original target time and feeling strong throughout.
He wasn’t feeling any easier during training because he was still putting in the same effort, but his cardiovascular fitness had improved massively. The problem was that he was tracking the wrong metrics – focusing on perceived effort rather than actual performance outcomes.
This connects to something that’s been bothering me about the fitness industry lately. Unlike the social media influencers pushing one-size-fits-all programmes for ££££, real performance improvement comes from understanding individual physiology. I’m not trying to be an influencer – I’m trying to give you information that’s actually true and relevant.
Why VO2max Matters More Than You Think
VO2max is considered one of the best measures of cardio-metabolic fitness – the integration of heart, lungs, blood, and metabolism. More importantly, it’s the most trainable aspect of fitness. Back when I was doing my degree and helping Peter Keen in the lab in the late 80s and early 90s, we saw data from Chris Boardman showing continuous VO2max improvements over 10 years – improvements that directly translated to his dominance in time trials and ultimately his Olympic gold medal. His VO2 max went from good to exceptional, but it wasn’t a straight line- more like a mountain range with peaks and troughs – yet the overall trajectory kept building upward, directly correlating with his race performances getting faster and faster.
For endurance athletes – runners, cyclists, triathletes, even my boxers and footballers – there’s a direct relationship between oxygen uptake and performance. The more oxygen your body can take up and use, the faster you can go, the better work output you can sustain.
But here’s where it gets really interesting from a health and longevity perspective. Higher VO2 max has a massive impact on your ability to have a long, healthy lifestyle and perform daily tasks effectively. It’s not just about athletic performance – it’s about quality of life.
The Kenyan Runner Revelation
I also clearly remember when I was studying for my PhD in around 1995 the cross-country world championships were in CapeTown. Professor Tim Noakes managed to get elite Kenyan athletes into our lab to compare their VO2 max with top white runners. At the time, I was running 32 minutes for 10K – which wasn’t good enough to make the cut for the study!
What we found was fascinating and performance-defining. The VO2max of those elite Kenyan runners wasn’t massively different from runners doing 30-31 minutes for10 K. The major difference was what portion of their VO2 max they could hold at threshold – and this translated directly to the Kenyans running sub-28 minute10Ks while the comparison group was stuck in the low 30s. That threshold efficiency had a massive impact on performance at that elite level, often making the difference between making an Olympic team or watching from home.
Drop down to longer distances – half marathon, marathon, Ironman – and it becomes about where your peak aerobic metabolism sits. I see so many people training at the wrong endurance base, which means they don’t have the right foundation in place.
The Weekend Training Connection
This brings me back to something I observed during my weekend long runs – the same issue I see with those Strava segment chasers I mentioned in my walks. People are often training at intensities that feel right but aren’t actually optimal for their goals.
Your steady riding or running should be using a reasonable amount of fat as fuel, which helps keep body weight in check. For runners especially, every kilogram of non-essential mass you can lose – fat mass, not muscle – can improve marathon time by around two minutes. I’ve seen this repeatedly with my athletes: one runner dropped 8kg of body fat over 16 weeks and improved his marathon time from 3:45 to 3:28. Another lost 5kg and knocked 12 minutes off her half marathon PB. There’s solid data backing this up, and I see it proven in real results time and again.
Why?
If you’re not carrying that extra weight, your relative VO2max goes up. Assuming lung function, blood capacity, and haemoglobin levels don’t change, reducing the weight you’re carrying around means your oxygen consumption relative to bodyweight improves dramatically.
This is why power-to-weight ratio has always been critical for cyclists, especially for climbing and acceleration. We want to be as lean as possible, not as light as possible – reducing body fat without sacrificing muscle mass.
The Tracking Trap
Back to my Jaguar Land Rover engineer – he was using perception of effort to measure progress instead of looking at the right metrics. Like those weekend warriors who judge their long runs by how hard they feel rather than whether they’re hitting their fuelling strategies, pacing objectives, and building the specific adaptations they need for race day.
Whether we’re talking about Strava segments, weekend long runs, or structured training plans, the principle is the same: we need to track the right things and trust the process even when it doesn’t feel immediately easier.
The engineer’s cardiovascular fitness had improved massively, but because he was still working at the same relative intensity, it didn’t feel any different. He’d lost body weight, increased metabolic efficiency, and could sustain higher speeds for the same effort – but he nearly missed it because he was focused on how it felt rather than what it achieved. When race day came, he finished 43 minutes faster than his target time and felt stronger at the end than he’d ever felt during training.
This individualised approach is exactly why I can’t work the way those mass-market programmes suggest. Every athlete has different physiology, different training zones, different strengths and weaknesses. The results speak for themselves -athletes working with properly assessed, individual training zones consistently outperform those following generic plans. You can’t assume that two athletes with exactly the same VO2max have the same training points – that’s the nuance that makes coaching truly effective and delivers real results.
The Morning Walk Lesson
As I finished this morning’s walk, watching the sun come up over the trees on the Chase, I was reminded that the simplest habits often reveal the deepest truths about performance. My 45-minute walking routine – which fell apart over winter and I’m now rebuilding – creates the mental space to see these connections clearly.
Whether it’s an engineer missing his own performance improvements, weekend warriors chasing the wrong intensities, or athletes getting distracted by social media noise instead of focusing on what actually works – the common thread is always the same: consistency and purpose beat sporadic intensity every time.
The best performances come from understanding your individual physiology, tracking the right metrics, and having the discipline to trust the process even when it doesn’t feel dramatically different day to day.
That’s this week’s insight from my forest walks. As always, I’m here if you need me – I love chatting about the science behind performance and helping you achieve your goals in the most efficient way possible.
Have a brilliant week,
Garry
P.S. Are you tracking the right metrics in your training? Sometimes the most important improvements are the ones that don’t feel any easier. If you’d like to understand your individual training zones and what your body actually needs,r ather than following generic advice, drop me a line.