I had a great conversation with a friend today. He’s very analytical, but primarily focused on business. He read my blog and mentioned that he enjoyed my scientific approach to training. He made some suggestions that I should monitor and study how they impact my workouts.

My workout today, a very fast paced zone 1 (barely to zone 1) workout that was as fast as my zone 2 portion of my workout on Saturday, got me thinking about the details of a run and what impacts heart rate, and therefore, pace. My guess is the hot, humid weather impacted my heart rate on Saturday versus the cool morning today. But who knows. It could of been diet, sleep, etc..

I kind of want to know. I thought about all the things that can impact a workout. I instantly thought about multiple regression models that could predict the workout time for a given heart rate based on all of these factors. Yup, I’m a nerd.

But first step would be, what factors influence a run and/or bike workout, and maybe even a swim workout. All things that could impact the workout even a little should be considered, and we can let the multiple regression model workout which ones are actually significant. Even without a regression model, I’m sure we can identify trends. Here’s what I’ve got so far, and I believe there are multiple ways some of these can be filled in, so it will take a little more though (please comment if you have other influencers):

1. Day before diet
2. Day of diet
3. Diet during workout
4. Hydration
5. Temperature
6. Humidity
7. Wind
8. Weather conditions (rain, hail, snow)
9. Pollen count (friend thinks this affects people more than we believe it does)
10. Equipment (e.g. clothes, bike, hydration packs, shoes)
11. Company (e.g. friends, training clubs)
12. Sleep quantity (number of hours)
13. Sleep quality (restful / not restful)
14. Stress (maybe high stress is good for workouts)
15. Hills
16. Bowel movements (yup, all athletes know this can make/break a workout)
17. Time awake before workout (similar to time of day)
18. Stretching before
19. Pains (e.g. nagging pains, injuries, soreness, tightness, etc..)
20. Motivation (e.g. excited, not excited, bored)
21. Workout stops (my guess is stopping at lights makes shorter runs easier since the heart rate has a chance to recover)

A fairly exhaustive list. What am i missing?