What: Motorsports is exactly that, a sport that revolves around motors. It is a sport, thus health and fitness is important. Road racing works your heart (and lungs) like if you were running a marathon. A healthy heart is critical!
If I knew then, what I know now: Have a healthy mix of aerobic, anaerobic and strength training to your work out program. Too much of anything is not good. I’ll cover this in a separate post.
Products that can make running easier:
- Apple Watch Nike Edition – I like the green color scheme
- Fitbit Surge – used this before an Apple watch
- Endomondo – this is my primary running app
- Strava – this is my primary cycling app
- Polar Heart Rate Monitor – use for long distance runs
- Nike running clothes – I like the kind that have the built-in compression underwear. Helps with inner thigh chafing
- Hoka One One running shoes – great cushion, light and very durable.
- Bodyglide Anti-Chafe Balm – nipple chafing and bleeding is real and no joke. Depending on the shirt I am wearing, if I am running more than 4 miles, it’s required.
Foundational truths
Before we dive into what should be done, let’s all get on the same page about what happens when you’re driving and especially when you’re competing.
- Your heart is important: This is not a question or an opinion. It is important for you to not only live but to handle stressful situations. While most of us enjoy putting a car, motorcycle, kart or boat through it’s paces, the fact that your heart rate goes up, means that it is a stressful situation, where your body and heart (and lungs) specifically, work harder.
- Aging doesn’t help our cause: Generally speaking, as we get older, our hearts are not able to work as well and our maximum heart rate slowly goes down over time. Here is a good article on Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) from Runners World.
- Oh yeah, the lungs: The lungs are the things that bring oxygen into the bloodstream, of which then the heart pumps all that good, nutrient and oxygen rich goodness all over the body. Then the various body parts use that goodness to power themselves, such as the brain, eyes, muscles, literally everything in your body.
Maximum Heart Rate (MHR)
Per above, as we get older, this goes down. See below and find your age.
I am currently 33 (less than a month from 34) and what this says is that my maximum heart rate is around 185 Beats Per Minute (bpm). If I were to get my heart going above that OR near that level for too long, I’d probably end up in a hospital unless I explicitly trained my heart for those situations.
It’s been documented in several articles, studies and my own personal data collection (below) that for a racing car driver, the heart rate can range from 120 – 160bpm, throughout a race.
Below is an example from a race, in August this past summer as I was wearing an Apple Watch and collected heart rate data (note – I did not start a workout session and thus why it didn’t collect data every 1 second). Note that you can see when I started doing warm up exercises before getting into the car and my heart rate picking up as we got into the thick of the race. If I remember correctly, the race started ~4:35pm and was a 1-hour race.
Update: When I was originally writing this post, I looked everywhere for this screenshot below. This was taken using a Fitbit Surge, during a day of three races and near 100 degree heat. That is some serious heat, sweat and elevated heart rate. Racing is no joke!
Now, here is a screenshot from a 4+ mile run I did recently as well at a ~9:00 minute mile pace. Not super fast but not a slouch by most measures.
What does this tell us? Driving at even 7/10’s in a track day or racing session for ~20 minutes is the equivalent, cardiovascularly, as going for a relatively intense run. So you are sitting in a hot race car, covered head to toe with fire-resistant material and your heart and lungs are working like if you were running a half-marathon.
Ok, healthy heart and lungs are important, but why again?
Like everything else on this site, it’s about helping you be a better driver. A driver who makes good decisions, usually, ends up being a faster and more consistent driver than someone who doesn’t make good decisions. Several things can lead to someone making bad decisions behind the wheel (on-track that is):
- Being nervous or confused (which usually elevates the heart rate)
- Being scared (which usually elevates the heart rate)
- Being angry aka the red mist! (also elevates the heart rate)
- Being tired (I won’t repeat again)
It gets more difficult to make good decisions, quickly, when you are tired, sweaty and out of breath. So the goal here is to condition your heart and lungs in a way, that you’re comfortable being in the stamina & endurance zones, and can make good decisions.
I personally felt like my overall athletic and aerobic endurance was and is a competitive advantage in most races, as I felt just as fresh at the start of a race, as I did at the beginning. Start strong and finish just as strong! This was even more pronounced on the 1 hour or longer races and especially when it was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
What should you do?
Disclaimer: We are not doctors, nor play them on TV. Consider consulting your doctor before taking on a new exercise program.
We will cover other types of exercise for different benefits in future posts but for here, we will focus on cardio health. The goal is to do exercises, that have you for the most part, in the stamina & endurance zones. It’s ok to peak every once in a while into the conditioning zone or drop momentarily into the weigh loss zone.
Most of my driving sessions are 20 or 30 minutes and sometimes 60 minutes long. So I target conditioning myself to be able to easily handle 30 minutes by exercising for 45-60 minutes and having regular (about every other week) 60-75 minute workout sessions, usually 6+ mile runs. This is grounded in a theory from playing football and Taekwondo. Practice should be harder than the actual competition (most of the time) so that at least from a conditioning standpoint, the competition will be a relative breeze or you at least have plenty of reserves to go harder.
Here are some top exercises and plans to consider:
- Running: It’s pretty much free. I found it the best to sign up for a race that forces you to build up to a goal, set a schedule and stick to it. Better yet, do a race with a friend or two, so you have support and accountability for when you’re too lazy to run in the rain.
- Highly suggest downloading an app like Endomondo, Nike Run Club or MyRunKeeper. They all have some kind of functionality where you can state your goal (like run a 10k), the pace you want to have and when your race will be held. They come up with a personalized training program to build up your performance, you just run! Sometimes these are in premium memberships but you can easily find training plans online and just track them manually.
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- Here is the training plan I am using to run a half-marathon in September.
- Lake Chelan September 2017 Half Marathon Schedule
- I personally have trained to run a half-marathon for the past 4 years and have averaged about 300 miles ran per year. Check out my Endomondo profile here for the proof.
- I’ve also used running on days while I am at the track to do track walks, after the track has gone cold for the day.
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- Highly suggest downloading an app like Endomondo, Nike Run Club or MyRunKeeper. They all have some kind of functionality where you can state your goal (like run a 10k), the pace you want to have and when your race will be held. They come up with a personalized training program to build up your performance, you just run! Sometimes these are in premium memberships but you can easily find training plans online and just track them manually.
- Cycling: One downside to running is the repetitive joint impact throughout the body, especially toes, ankles, knees, hips and back. Cycling is a great alternative to running for cardiovascular performance. I personally bought a used Bianchi road bike and over the past few years have used it off and on as an alternative to running.
- Here is a link to my Strava profile – it’s been sparse lately because it’s cold and rainy in Seattle. 🙁
- Same plan though – whatever time you were planning to run, get on a bike in the gym or on a trail and cycle up a storm.
- Swimming: Admittedly, I am the least experienced here as I rarely get in a pool but I know it is great for aerobic exercise, working the body overall, core development and joint relief. If you have access to a pool, get on it!
Conclusion
Cardiovascular health and performance are not just important to live but they can give you a significant performance edge in driving. There is a reason you see several top professional drivers all over the world, also spend significant amounts of time doing the exercises above and in examples like Jenson Button, competing in Iron Man and Triathlon competitions.
Consider regular cardiovascular exercise to be part of keeping yourself healthier and it has a big potential upside to your driving.