NUMBER OF TRIALS NECESSARY FOR THE CRITICAL VELOCITY TEST 91

Abstract

The critical velocity test simultaneously measures aerobic (critical velocity; CV) and anaerobic running capacity (ARC). The purpose of this study was to investigate the number of treadmill runs (trials) required for accurate CV and ARC estimates. CV and ARC were determined from eight subjects based upon times to exhaustion at four speeds and from all combinations of two or three speeds. Two univariate repeated measures ANOVAs were used to determine differences in CV and ARC across the combinations. The omnibus F values were significant (p<.05) for both CV and ARC. The Dunnet test was used to follow up the analyses; CV and ARC determined from all four runs were considered“control” conditions. For both CV and ARC, significant differences from control occurred using the two slowest trials. In addition, the ARC values were more variable relative to control (coefficient of variation = 38.2%) than was the CV data (2.8%). These results indicate that using three trials may be sufficient to determine CV and ARC, however caution should be used with using two trials at slow speeds.