Discussion: Training equivalents

The recent discussion about soccer/football got me wondering about what (if any) formulas people might use to translate certain types of 'training' into "hour-equivalents" for purposes of counting training hours. The two that come to mind are mapping and hiking (with a pack).

I have always considered O-mapping to be legitimate 'training' - but never figured out how to keep track of it relative to other more intensive training. 6-7 hours in the field, off-trail, going up and down slopes, thinking about contours, vegetation interpretation etc - it has definite benefits.

I don't think I would count plain walking as any kind of training -- but hiking for 6 hours on trails, with hills, carrying a pack - perhaps legitimate low intensity training of sorts -- but how many hours is it worth?

Any thoughts? Maybe an earlier thread has discussed this kind of thing.

I normally log any activity based on the actual time doing it, and vary the intensity level. Eg - hiking would almost always be 1. It's necessary to take into account any rest stops however for this type of activity. Unfortunately this approach can over-inflate my AP training ranking when I'm on hiking vacations.

I'm not sure how this approach would work for mapping.

I wouldn't normally log walking, except when I'm recoving from injury (like now) - when I feel it's important to log any form of activity.

I tend to do a few hours worth of O coaching a week. I consider this training, but as John suggests, I only give it an intensity of 1 (but still use the actual time).
mapping and fieldwork is the same.


I don't log walking unless it is a particularly strenuous hike.

I don't take much notice of others' assessments of their own exercise intensity. It all depends what you are trying to achieve from loggng on AP.
I treat the AP 1-5 scale as a personal scale - I've set a consistent ranking which I can compare myself against week after week. So walking counts as a 1. Brisk power walking which can raise a sweat as 2. Jogging as a 2. It's a subjective ranking based on effort.

AP logging is about motivation as much as anything else. So log whatever gets you out exercising.

Walking has a place in my exercise regime - low level exercise is effective for weight reduction.
I recently walked up a mountain to 3800m ASL. For an unacclimatised person who lives at sea level that was hard work.

I would agree that it is very subjective and only you can decide what factors in. I know I reduce the time on some activities knowing I'm not doing something the entire time (ie-team sports), and I won't log my dogwalking, home renovations, etc..(but I will comment on them sometimes). For me everything is in relation to my goal (as mentioned by yahoo).

If a doctor told me I had to quit smoking, lose 120lbs, and walk at least 4 hours/week (I don't have those issues) I would log items like that. Luckily, my fitness is beyond that level, and I would be fooling myself if I put them as training. Part of posting publicly though is your friends should be able to jump on you if you start fooling yourself:-). As in, my lack of training lately...

The problem with training equivalents is that different types of training are simply not equivalent, due to the principle of specificity in physiological adaptations to training. Even different intensities of the same activity cannot be made equivalent by multiplying or dividing by a factor.

I have heard that one hour of cycling is equivalent to 1/2 hour of running, but it's hard to extrapolate any useful information from such a statement, even if it is considered to be true in some sense. Does it mean that cycling 30 hours per week is just as good as running 15 hours per week, if you're training to run your best in a marathon? Probably not.

An anology is cooking: if you're making cookies, how much sugar is equivalent to how much vanilla extract? There's no sensible answer, because the question is nonsensical, since it implies that one ingredient can be substituted for another, when the truth is that both sugar and vanilla extract are necessary to make the cookies as good as they can be. This analogy seems particularly apt when comparing time spent doing orienteering mapping with, for example, time spent running intervals. They are both useful in improving orienteering performance, but they are not substitutes for each other.

But if one really wanted to come up with equivalency factors, then I suppose that one might consider that, for some individual, doing V hours of orienteering mapping in a one-month period in W terrain might improve that individual's racing performance X months down the road in Y terrain by Z% And, for this same individual, doing A hours of repeat kilometers at anerobic threshold over a one-month period over B running surface and C incline might improve this individual's racing performance D months down the road in Y terrain by Z% There are so many variables, that it is next to impossible to reliably tease out the causal relationships to determine a factor of equivalence. Of course, this doesn't stop so-called experts from claiming to have figured it all out (based on personal experience or other anecdotal evidence) and writing articles for Runners World about it.

Forgot to mention: I log walking, if it sufficiently elevates my heart rate to reach my intensity 1 zone. This is probably of very little value to my orienteering training, but it's more relevant for rogaining or adventure racing.

Mapping for 8 hours is exhausting. A different kind of exhausting though.

You should log it as a note, not as training. I would count an easy jog as intensity 1 and anything below that should not be added as training time.

I get pretty tired walking around the shops for 4 hours with my fiance but wouldn't feel inclined to log the hours or even a percentage of them.

I'm very proud about a heart rate monitor that i sometime use. like Eric said if its going above my min threshold , could be logged, but I never see my heart rate high to pass that minimum

I log walking but only as like a 1. I used to walk to school every day last year. That was with a havey backpack was a mile walk. It only took us about 15 mins to walk it so i don't think it really effected anything but i still counted it. However if i'm walking around town i don't count that i put that as a note (if i even add it.)

So i guess my rule is if i'm walking somewhere at a nice speed and is more than a mile i'll count it as a 1. Should i not be counting it?

I thought about the issue of course setting. It may include some running, but a lot of time is spent reading features which I would not even look at during a race. When I choose a control position, I need to make sure that everything around the control is both on the map and in the terrain. This is slow and certainly not much of a physical task. I subtract the estimated time which I spent at the controls.

The main goal is to be honest with one self. I don't want to log hours of training which have no training effect. E.g. my garden work makes me sweat and I am completely exhausted after 10 hours of double digging and similar tasks. But I don't count it. Why? Because it is exhaustion, not training. Training goes to a limit, either by going fast (interval) or by going long (endurance) or a mix of both.

The problem that we have here in winter sport country like Austria is how to log the other forms of cross training like snow boarding, skiing, cross country skiing etc. I have personally used various forms of ratio over the years (1 hour running is the same as 1,5 hrs X-C skiing, 1 hour running is the same as 2 hours cycling etc) but in all honesty I have never really found it satisfactory and stopped doing it altogether a few years ago.

However, as most of you who ski know, a day of skiing can really be a hard training, and so I just started "noting" it in my diary, but not including it in my totals and this worked well. I just keep an additional time column for OTHER exercise.

What do I include? Skiing, cycling, swimming, gym, hiking, snow shovelling - stuff like this. What do I not include? Well any form of walking (including walking the dog), any form of cycling that is NOT training (i.e. shops, cinema, visiting), a day by the pool etc.

As can be seen by all the entries above, it is purely subjective - put in what you feel works best for you. For me attackpoint is purely about training and motivation, and not about ranking, so I'll just continue to log the KM I have run :)

Hope you find a good and fair formula to use.

If you were a lumberjack, would you count work (chopping down and hauling tress) as training?-)

You are in the state you are in because of what you do.

It doesn't matter if you call it training or not - walking the dog a mile every day is still walking a mile.

For me, training is any activity that improves the state of my body. Because I am not a peak professional athlete, walking for a good amount of time has a positive impact on my body - and I record it.

I practice with a song and dance group weekly and record an hour's worth of it - because it is footwork, coordination, and physical activity (as well as exercise for the lungs).

My goal is to make steady progress and just because something is fun or part of another activity doesn't mean I don't get to note the positive impact it has.

Because your body is different than mine, your definition of what impacts your body will differ...

I log it all. A lot of my "training" may not be training for orienteering but it is some form of exercise. It also indicates where I spent my time when I wasn't doing serious training.
I do adjust the time to keep from inflating my totals when I consider the excercise to be less than my Level 1, particularly for Square Dancing which still is over 50% by time. At a 2 hour dance of which 90 minutes is actual floor time, I will log it as level 1 for 1/3 of the time (30 minutes). I figure that walking is 3 times the exercise of dancing, although dancing has a lot more mental benefits.
As for walking, I consider it important to log. Many forms of training have high intensity but do not add to the milage totals. Walking balances it out with milage and low intensity. Plus many of my walks are with my girlfriend or daughter to get them to get some exercise. How would it look it I said it wasn't really exercise?

Maybe we can get Ken to add some new features to AP which combines time and level to determine how many AP Units of training we have.. I could use the incentive to get my training up from just level 1 and 2.

Hey Ross,

I usually include anything that is at "jogging" intensity (i.e., level 1) or above.

I don't count walking, so a week-long hiking trip doesn't count for anything. I don't count easy paddling, so a week-long canoe trip counts for nothing. It's hard to turn 40 hours of hiking/paddling into something equivalent to hours of running.

I do sometimes down-grade time spent on an activity, but usually when doing something that has intermittent training-level efforts. Course-setting can involve running/orienteering at decent intensity, interspersed with standing around checking map/locations, etc. I usually try to subtract out time spent standing around. I would have trouble equating mapping to training because relatively little time is spent actually running. Coaching can involve running or skiing with time spent stopped - so I subtract out time spent standing around.

I am not entirely consistent, because I do log ski touring as training, regardless of the pace. I'm interested in counting total km skied, so I count it all. I usually down-grade time to a "training" pace (like 5 min/km).

Does it mean that cycling 30 hours per week is just as good as running 15 hours per week, if you're training to run your best in a marathon? Probably not.

I can speak from personal experience that 30 hours a week of cycling does not result in a particularly good marathon.

I'm with Tim; I err on the side of logging too much. I don't log walks (I do log them for Baby-O!) unless they are specifically designed as recovery from something like a marathon where even a slow recovery run is not feasible. My level-1 training is mostly mapping, but may include other activities that have a relevant component without resulting in elevated HR.

FWIW, my remaining levels are 2: base training (including recovery), 3: tempo or base with harder efforts mixed in, 4: intervals, hill work, O-races, etc., 5) full competition efforts (generally not including O, since I can't run all out and navigate accurately) or heavy work in the weight room.

This discussion originally started about how you compare different forms of exercise and maybe got off track a bit when we started discussing what exercise to log.

I have seen a number of papers comparing different forms of exercise. There are comparison tables in some of the popular exercise text books.
Here is a link to an article which references some exercise physiology studies published last century.
http://www.fitness.gov/exerciseweight.pdf

If you have not read this type of table before the article may be of some merit.
Most if not all AP'ers seem to be exercising at higher intensity levels than those quoted, but data might be useful for comparison.
I would just add one line at the end of the article:-

10. Join AP!

This covers most of the preceding 9 Tips.

Years ago, I invented my own training comparison table and somewhat based my training on it. As I adventure race, pretty much anything could be translated in to some sort of useful exercise. I based everything on calories burned per hour and just arbitrarily granted a score of 10 to a 12km/hr run pace - I think that is what it was anyway. So everything else was given a score of 1-12 based on its calorie ratio to running 12 km in one hour. I tried to do at least 10 "points" of activity a day.

Anyway, not saying this does or doesn't have any value, but it was semi-useful at the time and very simple to setup by downloading an exercise/calorie chart in to a spreedsheet. Now my training is usually a little more focused towards my weaknesses vs. general overall fitness.

as long as there is some sort of increased heartrate and/or muscle exertion, anything could really be called training. I think the important thing though is that what you record is consistent with the rest of your log and that it is not inflationary relative to your level of fitness. For example, if you are a senior citizen coming off of surgery walking would definitely be an important thing to log. However, if you are a fit twenty-something training for an ultramarathon, not so much. I think that the training equivelants would not be something that is a standardized thing but something that would vary from person to person based on their goals and fitness. If I were walking/slow jogging for 6 hours doing mapping, I might feel inclined to log it as 1 hour of 1 intensity training, but that is entirely up to you.

The most embarrasing thing that I have been known to log is snow shovelling. If there is a thin layer to skim off, I don't bother. However, if the snow is heavy or there is a lot of ice/compacted snow to break up and I have to do a lot of hacking, I have know problem logging 15-20 minutes of snow shovelling as 10 minutes of 1 intensity strength training. I do this because I know that if I were at a gym lifting weights I would be logging that down, and I am working just as hard/ sweating just as much shovelling the snow.

Although I haven't orienteered seriously in years and I'm on AP only as incentive to get back into shape and possibly get out orienteering again, here are my two cents on this topic:

My basic guideline is always the HRM. I use the Olympiatoppen HR zones as illustrated by Sandy and Holger HJ (which conveniently fit into the AP zones). If it doesn't get your HR up, you don't log it... and even then, sometimes you don't.

I always try to err on the side of logging too little, which in turn makes me try to log more quality workouts. I used to log hockey practice as very low percentage of my time on the ice, figuring that my HR wasn't all that high, but then I wore my HRM on the ice and realized that my HR was pretty high most of the time. I pretty much log my hockey games as full ice duration since I'm skating my a** off the entire time.

-Stretching doesn't count.
-Walking (even quite briskly) probably doesn't count.
-Standing around in the woods probably doesn't count.
-Yoga doesn't count.
-Sitting in the Hot tub or sauna doesn't count.
-Strength stuff is a bit complex (I don't do it, so I don't log it, but I've contemplated it) but I do know that sitting around waiting for the equipment to free up doesn't count.

Having said this, everyone on AP has their own preferences and everyone wants to log all their hours and "win". I check out other people's logs and see for myself what their quality is like to try to inspire myself to reach their levels.