The tattoo technology both looks good and helps you train
Forget what your parents told you – tattoos can be not just cool, but useful in helping you measure your work-outs, according to new research from the University of California.
Temporary tattoos created by the University’s San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering act as a bio-sensor that sticks to your skin – with their purpose being to measure the levels of lactate in your sweat.
Lactate is a by-product of physical activity and an indicator of your exercise intensity — a.k.a. how hard you’re working. When you exercise at a low or moderate level, your body is able to clear/eliminate all the lactate that is formed and you can continue indefinitely. But when you exercise at sufficiently high intensities and the amount of lactate produced exceeds what the body can clear, it accumulates and leads to fatigue.
A popular training pace is termed the ‘lactate threshold,’ which equates to the pace/running speed that can be maintained without accumulating excessive lactate. As a general rule, your lactate threshold is the pace you can sustain for about an hour. For many, that’s somewhere between your 10K and 10 mile race pace.
Tech Runner 