Inside Nasa

This test was conducted to measure your body's ability to support aerobic effort for long periods of time.

Aerobic effort is when your body uses oxygen to create energy. After your body depletes its maximum capacity of oxygen to burn, the process becomes anaerobic when oxygen is not used and the body creates lactic acid.

Since oxygen consumption increases with the increase of the energy released, we can estimate the maximum aerobic capacity by measuring VO2 max: max possible from your body use oxygen to produce energy.

A solid Aerobic essential if you want to stay injury free and run this race faster than you are targeting. Aerobic training consisted of running at 60-75% of your maximum heart rate. This translates into a rate that is 1 ½ to 2 minutes per mile slower than 10K race pace. At this rate, you can run and follow a conversation without huffing and blowing.

This test is commonly called the Cooper test, the NASA flight surgeon who invented and used this method for military reasons.

Testing consisted of running 12 minutes straight flat at a constant speed. Simply measure the distance you run in those 12 minutes and compare your results with the tables below.

Test With Cooper, you can also measure your VO2max using the formula: distance [meters - 505] / 45.

A good rule of thumb is to measure and monitor changes in endurance fitness in time to evaluate your progress.

Please visit the NASA test of endurance fitness on Running Shoes Guru to find the table with the results, divided by ages and sexes.

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