It's more about hitting the target intensity vs target pace. There can be a correlation between pace and intensity, but factors like hills, altitude, wind, temperature all affect the pace you can run at a certain intensity. When running you can manage your intensity with heart rate, lactate, and pace. I like to use all three with the strongest emphasis on lactate.
The Ingebritsens are dialing in their training intensities with lactate. To do this you need to do a lactate test to see what your lactate curve looks like. Then you can identify the proper training intensities. Everyone's lactate curve is going to be different. Not everyone's "lactate threshold" is 4mmol/L. For some it might be 1.5mmol/L others it could be 5.5mmol/L.
When doing "threshold" work you want to aim for intensities around that lactate threshold. A little above and a little below. Taking lactate samples in field during workouts is the best way to manage intensity and make sure you're hitting targeted intensity.
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The reason that the actual lactate testing has value, as opposed to simply dictating a pace, is because the paces evolve as you adapt to this type of training. For example, as you get used to to the short-rest 400s, a well developed athlete will be able to run at or near 5k pace and keep their lactate below 4.0. I’ve seen experienced athletes do this on a track at 7000 ft. That said, if you don’t have access to a lactate meter, MP pace for the morning sessions and 10k for the short rest 400s is a good approximation. I find those paces are a decent heuristic, even at altitude.
But this assumes that you have a good history of threshold training as background. If you’re not comfortable doing 7 x 1600 at MP and 25 x 400 at 10k pace on short rest weekly, you should do that in single sessions instead.
There is no training paces which are correct. Train with lactate. 0.3-0.5 mmol below aerobic threshold in morning is great. In afternoon, stay 0.3-0.5 below anerobic threshold. Too many people try to do this method without lactate meters especially at the college level. As someone who has gone from the american style cruise intervals and tempos to training with lactate, there is usually a large discrepency between what people think is the correct pace versus what really is.
Mike Smith goes by "breathing" and seems to be pretty successful with it.
Where could I get more information about it? Thank you in advance.
If you understand norwegian -> Jakob i, Filip i, Henrik i, gjert, Marius bakken, Narve, sindre, moen, boutera, grövdal, alnes -> are recurring guests of ”i det Lange löp/breaking marathon limits”. The episodes with marius bakken are unreal, everyone should study those.
If you want to listen in english -> Narve and Victor smångs are guests of the podcast ”conversations about running” episode 33 and 34.
For threshold paced training, the actual pace is not typically the main thing to look at…more-so, it is the effort level and blood lactate concentration that is associated with the pace. For example, a guy may use Daniel’s running formula calculator in order to get an idea of what their threshold pace may be around. However, for threshold training, this pace can’t be strictly the pace that the athlete goes at. Meaning, they may go slower or a bit faster some days depending on factors such as last nights sleep, nutrition that day, temp, weather, interval length, altitude, etc. So, for say 20x400 at threshold pace, an athlete may be able to go a little faster per 400, as compared to running a session of 5x4 minutes let’s say. Generally, threshold pace can be associated with lactate levels of between 2 and 4.5 mmol/l. However, the ideal lactate level may be different from day to day. hope this helps.
This post was edited 50 seconds after it was posted.
There is no training paces which are correct. Train with lactate. 0.3-0.5 mmol below aerobic threshold in morning is great. In afternoon, stay 0.3-0.5 below anerobic threshold. Too many people try to do this method without lactate meters especially at the college level. As someone who has gone from the american style cruise intervals and tempos to training with lactate, there is usually a large discrepency between what people think is the correct pace versus what really is.
What is mmol and how do you measure it whilst running?
For threshold paced training, the actual pace is not typically the main thing to look at…more-so, it is the effort level and blood lactate concentration that is associated with the pace. For example, a guy may use Daniel’s running formula calculator in order to get an idea of what their threshold pace may be around. However, for threshold training, this pace can’t be strictly the pace that the athlete goes at. Meaning, they may go slower or a bit faster some days depending on factors such as last nights sleep, nutrition that day, temp, weather, interval length, altitude, etc. So, for say 20x400 at threshold pace, an athlete may be able to go a little faster per 400, as compared to running a session of 5x4 minutes let’s say. Generally, threshold pace can be associated with lactate levels of between 2 and 4.5 mmol/l. However, the ideal lactate level may be different from day to day. hope this helps.
This post’s mentioning of sleep & nutrition’s impact is spot on. The life-stress variable’s impact on lactate is something I would never have appreciated until I started testing. A pace that generates 2.5 mmol/l one week can yield 11 the next week in the exact same session if an athlete has one terrible night of sleep. It’s something coaches talk about in the abstract but it becomes very apparent when you test lactate consistently.
For threshold paced training, the actual pace is not typically the main thing to look at…more-so, it is the effort level and blood lactate concentration that is associated with the pace. For example, a guy may use Daniel’s running formula calculator in order to get an idea of what their threshold pace may be around. However, for threshold training, this pace can’t be strictly the pace that the athlete goes at. Meaning, they may go slower or a bit faster some days depending on factors such as last nights sleep, nutrition that day, temp, weather, interval length, altitude, etc. So, for say 20x400 at threshold pace, an athlete may be able to go a little faster per 400, as compared to running a session of 5x4 minutes let’s say. Generally, threshold pace can be associated with lactate levels of between 2 and 4.5 mmol/l. However, the ideal lactate level may be different from day to day. hope this helps.
This post’s mentioning of sleep & nutrition’s impact is spot on. The life-stress variable’s impact on lactate is something I would never have appreciated until I started testing. A pace that generates 2.5 mmol/l one week can yield 11 the next week in the exact same session if an athlete has one terrible night of sleep. It’s something coaches talk about in the abstract but it becomes very apparent when you test lactate consistently.
Seriously such a day to day difference, 2.5 to 11.0?
This means a lab test (one off test) is a waste of money.
I'm waiting for the invention of realtime lactate, that shows up on your watch like the heart rate. So you can adjust on the fly. Similar to continuous glucose monitor, we need a continuous lactate monitor.
Seriously such a day to day difference, 2.5 to 11.0?
This means a lab test (one off test) is a waste of money.
Even without the high variability of blood lactate, few if any methods of calculating LT2, e.g. OBLA 4.0 mmol/l, have concordance with maximal lactate steady state so the people taking graded exercise tests while measuring lactate to try to determine their threshold aren't getting what they're promised, especially if they're doing VO2 max testing on the same day so one is done in a fatigued state, and it's all a moving target anyway if the training is actually effective so the practical benefit of getting an exact value is questionable.
When we get down to brass tacks, it's hard to determine what the method actually is in principle and not hype. There is some consensus that outside of VO2 max focused training and speed work, endurance athletes should try to stay at or below threshold so as not to get penalized in terms of recovery. That makes sense to me, but how much under threshold would be optimal and the impact of duration is not something that has been well studied and is anyone's guess.
I will say that the first session of 'double threshold day' being substantially easier does suggest that four true threshold interval sessions a week plus a hill run and whatever else they do would be too taxing on elites running in excess of 150 km a week so anyone seeking to emulate them should take that into account while also noting that these guys didn't just jump into that style of training overnight and are well adapted to it by now.
This post’s mentioning of sleep & nutrition’s impact is spot on. The life-stress variable’s impact on lactate is something I would never have appreciated until I started testing. A pace that generates 2.5 mmol/l one week can yield 11 the next week in the exact same session if an athlete has one terrible night of sleep. It’s something coaches talk about in the abstract but it becomes very apparent when you test lactate consistently.
Seriously such a day to day difference, 2.5 to 11.0?
This means a lab test (one off test) is a waste of money.
In my experience, 90-95% of tests yield expected outputs. Once you know an athlete, you can usually give them a set of paces and generate desired lactate levels. But if something is off with the athlete, the outputs can be wildly off. I would say that a single test would probably be off only a fraction of the time. That’s useful information in context but one test might not be a reliable baseline.
In my experience, 90-95% of tests yield expected outputs. Once you know an athlete, you can usually give them a set of paces and generate desired lactate levels. But if something is off with the athlete, the outputs can be wildly off. I would say that a single test would probably be off only a fraction of the time. That’s useful information in context but one test might not be a reliable baseline.
I'm more skeptical than you. I'm not saying it's not useful information but studies have shown blood lactate concentration is much more variable than just about any other metric. A 2023 study by Christoph Zinner et al. showed it had ~18% day-to-day variability for a maximal effort and ~16% for a submaximal effort and that's testing done by trained professionals under carefully controlled conditions, presumably out in the field it's much worse.
My question is, how much of it is actionable information to warrant both the delay to the athlete and to yourself who I assume does the testing? What does lactate give you that pace, power, and RPE doesn't without invoking circular reasoning where it's bad if it's under an arbitrary value that isn't actually based on the current MLSS of the athlete?
So can you comment on how altitude teams use it differently than sea level teams? That's all I'm really trying to find out here since most of the anecdotes you hear about and the coaches I've spoken to are at altitude.
Imagine not knowing about this and asking for advice on letsrun🤓💀.
Elementary sport physiology
Imagine having the opportunity to help someone learn something and deciding to poke fun at them instead. Regardless if you consider it elementary, consider sharing knowledge when you can.
Don't run off a pace, think effort/breath. Learning to run by feel >> staring at a watch. All your aerobic system knows is time at an intensity - the distance of the rep, exact pace is meaningless for it. The point of threshold training is to find a rhythm, and find how relaxed you can settle into that rhythm...
I'm waiting for the invention of realtime lactate, that shows up on your watch like the heart rate. So you can adjust on the fly. Similar to continuous glucose monitor, we need a continuous lactate monitor.
Garmin come on...start working on this.
it would be great but given how awful even their sleep function is... it's going to be a while
I'm waiting for the invention of realtime lactate, that shows up on your watch like the heart rate. So you can adjust on the fly. Similar to continuous glucose monitor, we need a continuous lactate monitor.
Garmin come on...start working on this.
it would be great but given how awful even their sleep function is... it's going to be a while
There are some companies working on this. We will see if they every ship.
it would be interesting to see how closely lactate and pace(obviously adjusted for conditions) are correlated. How often does Jacob wake up and does some 5:00miles when lactate says he should be running 5:10s or 4:50s?
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