This feature - Stevie's Heart Rate - Driver Fitness.

Driving a sprintcar can be a physically demanding exercise, cornering g-forces and heavy steering place a great deal of strain on the driver. It's not unusual to see drivers sweating and breathing heavily after the feature race at the end of each night.

The heart has to work harder during a race to counteract g-forces, just to ensure blood gets to the various parts of the body. Another interesting thing to note is that it is not unusal for drivers to go quite some time without taking a breath - concentration levels are so high that often the driver does not 'think' to breathe.

As with any sport, driving a Sprintcar is a constant battle against fatigue. Fatigue causes slower lap times and compromises a good race performance. The areas of the driver's body that are most affected during the race are:-

• heart
• neck muscles
• shoulder muscles
• chest muscles
• forearms

The amount of jolting a driver is subjected to also often causes a loss of breath and aching joints. Some of the jolting-related problems can be minimised with a suitable fitting seat, but on nights where the track is particularly rough, there is not much that can be done to avoid it.

Stevie trains intensively to stay in a good condition to prevent any fatigue related problems whilst driving. However, this was not always the case, as in the first few seasons. During the first seasons Stevie often tired during the feature - due to the effort he had to put into driving the car.

This tiring prompted Stevie to take a closer look at his fitness in an effort to eliminate fatigue as a factor in his feature performances. Stevie currently undergoes an intensive gym routine 3-4 times a week and has recently purchased a heart rate monitor to measure improvements in his fitness.

Stevie's gym routine consists of the following:-

• 20mins Cross Training.
• 5mins interval sprint training (45sec on, 15 sec rest every minute)
• Weight training (not so much a fitness issue, but more for muscle tone)
• 4 mins Skipping, or 4 mins on the slide (Slide from side to side)

Stevie also does a bit of 'step sprinting' to work his legs even harder. This basically involves finding a big bunch of steps somewhere and running up them as fast as possible several times (you may have seen sports teams do this in a stadium during training before). The step running works the thigh muscles and calf muscles.

Since Stevie now has a heart rate monitor, he thought it would be interesting to take a look at his heart rate, prior to, during, and after racing on a Saturday night at the Springs (meeting of the 9th February 2002). The information we gathered was pretty interesting as you'll see below.

HEART RATE READINGS - 9th February 2002 - Western Springs Speedway.
These readings are taken before, during and after warmup, as well as before during and after the first heat (in which there were two restarts).

Warm Up Readings

• Before Warmup : 77/min
• Sitting on grid : 95/min
• Getting pushed thru gates : 115/min
• Sitting on track before push start : 110/min
• Back in pits, sitting down : 90/min
  

Race Readings (Heat one only)

• Receiving grid 5 and hearing all grid placings for other drivers : 102/min
• Sitting on dummy grid and hearing of white flag in heat before race : 113/min
• On track waiting to be push started : 124/min
• Avoiding crash on 1st start : 146/min
• Avoiding crash on 2nd start : 156/min
• End of race: 2nd place finish: 180/min
• Being pushed into pits : 114/min
• Stepping out of car and discussing race : 124/min

Peak measured rate = 180/min - end of race one.
Lowest measured rate = 77/min - pre warm up relaxation

As you can see from the numbers above, driving a sprintcar works you about as hard as a good run or bike ride, but significantly, it is compressed into a race that lasts only a few minutes. We will be taking reading at one minute intervals during a feature event soon, which should give us a very interesting insight into how hard Stevie's heart is having to work throughout the event.

As Stevie's fitness increases, his recovery rate should improve as well as his body's overall ability to cope with the stresses and strains of each race.

If you have any comments on this feature article, or questions you would like answered, please e-mail Cliff.