Data-Driven Insights at 12,000 Feet

A 100-mile mountain bike race above 10,000 feet is not an endeavor to be taken lightly. The Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race (LT100 MTB) in Colorado is known as the highest, hardest, one-day mountain bike race in the country. It has strict cutoff times at multiple locations, long sustained climbs, and unpredictable weather, all of which add to the difficulty of completing this race. The LT100 MTB is on the Lifetime Series of the world’s toughest MTB races, attracting some of the world’s top cyclists. To succeed, athletes need to prepare, condition, and train themselves at the highest levels.

This is where human performance training comes in: putting information to work to optimize exercise, nutrition, sleep, and more. Wearables like Oura Rings have revolutionized the collection of this data, and advances in data analytics are increasing the ability to draw useful insights. Booz Allen is working at the heart of human performance innovation, bringing traditional strength and conditioning, advanced sports and data science, and immersive simulations together for physical and psychological readiness, wellbeing, and performance. These human performance training solutions are helping warfighters, first responders, and elite athletes improve their preparation, performance, and recovery, to ensure optimal physical and cognitive readiness.

In keeping with Booz Allen’s mentality of serving as “client zero” for the firm’s emerging technology solutions, four Booz Allen leaders put this technology to the test in their personal lives this past summer. Their challenge: to train for and compete in the LT100 MTB.

In 2023, when the race opened up for registrations, avid cyclists John Larson, Will Healy, Michael Johnston, and Munjeet Singh were eager to sign up.

From Denver, Colorado Springs, and the Washington, DC, area, they started the long months of training. The devices they used varied: watches, heart rate monitors, power meters, headsets, smartphone apps, bike computers, and more. So did the data they tracked, from basics like heart rate to more complex metrics like functional threshold power, which calculates a person’s maximum power output for a sustained time period.

But when the four had the opportunity to train together remotely, it was clear this was a unique opportunity to apply the innovative problem solving for which Booz Allen is known to a hobby they all shared.

Each leader brings perspectives from a different business area. Munjeet is a leader in BrightLabs, with investments in human performance training and advanced analytics capabilities. Will leads Booz Allen’s support for Recreation.gov, which facilitates access to federal public lands, using AI as a tool to improve the user experience. Michael is a senior leader in Booz Allen’s space business, which is exploring ways to use AI to improve awareness, efficiency, and decision making. And John leads Booz Allen’s AI practice.

As they prepared for this grueling challenge, they found the lessons they were learning from their high-tech training experience could have many applications once the race was over. They contemplated how they might apply what they learned to solve critical challenges for warfighters and other government personnel facing extreme environments.

Human performance training data yields insights and guides progress in a wide variety of areas. Here are a few related to the Leadville 100 and Booz Allen’s human performance training practice.

When preparing for an extreme environment or a feat of endurance—or both—knowing what to expect is crucial. “Mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation for this race; that’s where analytics and AI can really give you an advantage,” states Michael. He completed this race two years in a row and completed the Leadville 100 run in 2022. “It’s really an eating contest with some tough bike riding mixed in,” he says. “I rely on human performance studies to optimize my fueling plan, along with gadgets like a bike computer to tell me when to fuel and how much to take in.”

John cites the grueling uphill climbs of the Leadville 100 as another example. One climb—with its 3,100-foot change in elevation over 7.5 miles—took him and others almost two hours to complete.

The descents bring their own challenges. “Picture crowds of people—sometimes two and three across—barreling down harrowing, rocky, steep sections of trail,” John describes. “Your teeth are rattling, your legs are screaming, and your mind is trying not to focus on the what-if of a crash.” In fact, crashes do occur. That, combined with mechanical issues and physical limitations, is why nearly 30% of riders who start the LT100 MTB don’t make it to the finish line. 

Augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) can be extremely impactful for physical training by simulating an experience and helping the mind and muscles prepare. AR/VR means that a cyclist can train for a race in the Colorado Rockies from the comparatively flat terrain of Northern Virginia. For warfighters, immersive simulations give them the ability to experience remote terrain or train with new equipment from a controlled real-world environment.  

On the other side of this feedback loop, smartwatches and other devices are continuously collecting data during missions and events. Think heart rates and reaction times for warfighters in the battlefield or maximal oxygen consumption measurements for Leadville 100 cyclists throughout their 12-hour ride. 

It’s invaluable data about how the body and mind respond in extreme conditions. 

“As we prepare people to travel to and live in space, this information will be a valuable complement to what we learn from programs like HI-SEAS, which is its own kind of extreme endurance test,” Michael says.

Gathering data to connect the dots is what human performance training is all about.

Data from all those devices—on calorie burn, power generation, and so forth—ideally work together to provide a holistic portrait of overall performance. This guides things to be aware of, improve, and worry about to enable sustained performance over a long duration.

Add data from outside of training hours, like insights on sleep quality from an Oura Ring, and you get an even more robust picture. An athlete with active young children, for example, might need to scale back the intensity of their workouts and prioritize rest and recovery.

“It’s amazing how digital transformation has democratized data,” says Will. “We use both authoritative and crowd-sourced data to improve customer experience for planning visits to public lands. There is tremendous value in seeing how others train for the race as well as past performances.”

Unfortunately, only three of the four Booz Allen cyclists were able to take part in the Leadville 100 in August.

“Even with the best tech and preparation, injuries happen—that’s the human part of human performance training,” says Munjeet. “But the data we’ve gained is helping me prepare for next year’s race—and giving me fresh insights for our human performance training work, and how we can maximize our partnerships with Oura and Sports Innovation Lab, for example.”

“I'm excited to dig into the collective data that we've gathered to get stronger and better, in our cycling and our work,” says John. “We're Booz Allen. It's in our DNA.”