Mr. Canova,
You've used the turbo diesel analogy frequently in recent lectures and interviews. You indicate that long fartleks designed to stimulate lactate production and then clearing/utilization by having the recovery portion of the at a moderate pace. You give the example of 1kms alternating 2:55/3:15 for 26km for a sub 2:05 marathoner.
I am curious if 2:55/km is fast enough to generate much lactate for a 2:05 marathoner? This is close to marathon pace and significantly slower than half marathon pace. I normally thought of 8k to half marathon pace as lactate threshold (pace at which ~4mmol/L is maintained in blood). I know lactate is created and used at slower paces, but is marathon pace fast enough to really optimize the lactate shuttle? A marathoner training at goal pace is certainly getting benefits, but is the benefit really related to lactate? Do you frequently have your marathoners do workouts alternating 10k and half marathon or marathon pace?
Peter Thompson suggests alternating 1500-5k pace with short recoveries at half marathon effort to optimize lactate utilization (http://www.newintervaltraining.com/). These workouts might be a little short for marathoners but do you find them particularly effective for lactate training?
Excerpt from interview (http://athleticsillustrated.com/interviews/renato-canova/):
Kenyan and Ethiopian top runners are able to run the full marathon at a blood lactate level very much higher than European or American, so they have the ability to run with high lactate for long time. This depends on the quality of the athletes, but mainly on their new type of training, including many sessions of intervals over the traditional Lactic Threshold. Ten years ago I considered lactic workouts as enemies for a marathon runner, now I use them in order to teach their body to use a part of lactate as new source of energy. Of course, at the same time we need to stimulate the body in quickly removing the produced lactate. Synthetically we need to use training that is able to produce more lactate, and at the same time to stimulate the velocity of removing it. For this situation, we need to use recovery at high speed, specifically variations of speed on long distances. For example, for an athlete running under 2:05, or under 2:20 women, we use 24/26 km alternating km in 2:55/3:15 or 3:15/3:35, in altitude (consider the difference of about three seconds per km from 2,400m and sea level, plus other three seconds for training shoes on rough roads compared with tarmac with racing shoes), and you can see how the average of these workouts is about the marathon pace we use in the competition.
CK: Did you make a conscious decision to include more time spent at LT because of new information coming out at that time that lactic acid was discovered to be a source of energy, rather than just a waste product?
RC: The fact lactic acid was discovered to be a source of energy is not something new, because already 40 years ago physiologists studying athletes knew this fact. The real problem is in the balance between the advantages (under the point of view of energy) that lactate can give, and disadvantages, connected with a higher level of saturation in the muscle fibers. If we are able to reach a high intensity in the extension, we can change the permeability of the membrane, increasing the velocity to remove lactate. So, more lactate doesn’t remain in the muscles fibers, but a part of it can be used as energy. That’s the reason because I speak of “Turbo Diesel” compared with the old system of pure “Diesel”. So, of course my decision was conscious, but I had the opportunity to change the level of the proposed workouts after looking at the results of this new system. Now, the best African athletes can run a half-marathon around 6 mml of lactate, and the full marathon about 4 mml, and this is something the traditional physiology didn’t consider possible.