Aerobic Threshold???

Definition of Science:

The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

The problem is that too many runners let guys in lab coats do the observations, identifications, descriptions, experimentations, investigations, and theoretical explanations of phenomena instead of doing the science THEMSELVES. The main problem with the science of exercise physiology is that the tests and experiments are done either 1)on a treadmill or 2)for too short a period of time. Science is constantly finding out new things about how the body works. Over the last 50+ years vo2max, peak running speed, lactate threshold, and a bunch more to come have been considered the "key factor to distance running success". Wait a few years and something else nice and shiney and new will come out. Gee, I wonder how much faster Frank Shorter or Deek or Clayton would have run if they only knew the great volumes of scientific information that our younger runners have today. Bull, freaking, shite.

Get your butt on the road and find out for yourselves how to tune your body. What did Shorter do? What did Deek do? What did Clayton do? What did Malmo do? What did Hodge do? What did Kennedy do? What does Meb do? What does KK do? What does Geb do? What does Bekele do? All of these runners have run much faster than 99% of this board. You become faster by looking back over what faster runners have done. Not repeating their admitted mistakes, but mimicking what they have done successfully. Hell, even someone like Jim Peters who ran 50 years ago has run better than 99% of this board.

The moment you start listening to someone in a lab coat sticking a hose in a runner's mouth over an actual successful runner is the moment you fail to meet your potential.

Alan

The answers definitely lie as much in each runner becoming simultaneously his own test subject and scientist, as well as in the wide-scale gathering of anecdotal information provided by decades upon decades of runners.

Lab work can only focus on a few variables at a time and may tout training procedures which vastly improve a crucial area of running fitness while ignoring the fact that that specific procedure may erode or undermine other areas of fitness or that it may be limited in the number of weeks or months it can be successfully applied before it becomes a detriment.

Relying exclusively on exercise science to tell you how to run is like trying to meet all your nutritional needs by eating only nutrients in pill form. Surely you can get vitamins, essential fatty acids, flavonoids, minerals, etc. from pills, right? But do you really think that approach is better than eating real foods? A normal digestive system is designed to process foods with a certain transit time that is virtually impossible to replicate by using the most advanced combination of capsules. Just the simple act of chewing will begin enzymatic breakdown of foods and prepare them for the digestive system. You can't get that by gulping pills, even if you take the enzymes themselves in pill form, because the timing of breakdown and absorption is not the same. Plus, wouldn't you rather eat foods? They taste better than pills and they provide you with more satiety!

It's analogous to running. You can learn what basic running "diet" is a healthy and productive one far more by paying attention to the people that did it all before you than you can by reading theoretical material pieced together from hundreds of limited, short-term studies conducted by non-runners. The information from the lab can be useful in modifying your temporary running routine in a small sense, in the same way that supplementing your diet with a vitamin pill can help you if you seem deficient in that vitamin and for some reason aren't assimilating it from your food. But the big picture is never found in the annals of exercise physiology, just as all the best pills available cannot replace a balanced diet.

Case in point: Unquestionably, working at max vo2 improves a number of physical attributes resulting in better running - stroke volume, mitochondrial development, lactate clearance (if done intelligently), to name a few. But guess what ... it turns out that it's probably just as important that workouts at that effort level familiarize a runner with speeds right near race pace for 3,000 through 5,000. Race pace - simple as that, yet most of the guys in the labs don't even think of that as a variable because it isn't measurable with a microscope or a metabolic cart. And if you were to isolate all the information gleaned from max vo2 tests with rats and formulated a running program based on that, you'd crash and go up in flames in short order.

The scientists are always learning about the individual ingredients. Knowing how isolated ingredients work can be a plus at times, but it's the running done by your predecessors and then by you yourself that will provide you with the recipe. The scientists won't get that anytime soon, if ever.

Back to the conversation at hand...

It sounds to be as though some posters are confusing the terms AEROBIC threshold with ANAEROBIC threshold. Aerobic threshold occurs at a pace that is close to marathon pace...it is EASY. Theoretically, it is the pace you could run indefinitely if you had unlimited glycogen storage. For most distance runners, it's at a HR between 140 and 145 (for someone with a HRmax in the mid to high 190s), or roughly 65-70% of HRmax. Lactate does not rise significantly above resting levels (<2mm)

ANAEROBIC threshold occurs at a pace that is around 10 mile race pace, or a pace you could hold for about an hour. It is the point at which there is an equilibrium in maximal lactate accumulation and removal...also known as maximal lactate steady state. It usually in the 80-85% HRmax range. Lactate would be around 4mM.

So, all told, most off day runs should be run at or near the AEROBIC threshold.

Are you sure you know what you are talking about?

I can show you HR graphs of marathons run with HRav 177 in an athlete with an HRmax of 196 (~90% HRmax). I can show you HM races run with 181-183 HRav (~93% HRmax).

Seems like you don't know many well-trained runners...

Vigil says Aerobic running is roughly 140-160HR. Threshold is ABOVE that.

Daniels says the same.

Somewhere, someone on here got some silly idea that slow is good. How can THRESHOLD be easy!!! Oh i better slow down to 8:00min pace.

We'll you keep slowing down and i'll keep speeding up and then we can have a race.

forget all the science for a second. if you want to run faster what would you do? Practice running slowly?

You are way off the mark with your figures jtupper-ware.

jtupper-ware wrote:

So, all told, most off day runs should be run at or near the AEROBIC threshold. Aerobic threshold occurs at a pace that is close to marathon pace...it is EASY.

Yeah, right! Ask a world-class athlete to use marathon pace as their easy pace every day and he/she will look at you like you're off your head!

jtupper-ware wrote:Aerobic threshold occurs at a pace that is close to marathon pace...it is EASY.

Marathon pace for a 2:30 marathoner is much easier than marathon pace for a 2:10 marathoner. This debate is along the same lines as the "running tempo runs at half-marathon pace every day" debate. The muscular stress of 5:00 pace is the same regardless of whether you're able to run 3 miles or 13 miles all-out at that pace. The muscular force required to produce such a speed is relatively similar for everyone. So, when someone like Malmo says something like "if you're running 4 miles at half-marathon pace you're not running a tempo run because a tempo run is supposed to be relatively easy", he has a valid point. 1:10 half-marathoner Joe Q is running only 5:20 pace on these runs while 1:05 half-marathoner Elite Joe is running 5:00 pace and is under more muscular stress. The same can be said about marathon pace. You have to think outside the heart and lungs and lactate values. You also have to think about the physical force, the physical work, being done by the muscle.

Alan

probe driver wrote:

forget all the science for a second. if you want to run faster what would you do? Practice running slowly?

It is only when I am running a lot of easy mileage that I can ever race my fastest. Just a bunch of short fast stuff does very little for me. So yes, that's exactly what I'd do.

Nobody said, "don't do speed work." They just said do your easy runs easily. Don't need science for that. The results speak for themselves.

Alan

I'm going to ask you again. What is your coaching history? Have you coach 3:00 runners? Have you coach a 2:30 runners? Have you coach 2:20 runners? Have you coach 2:10 runners? How many of each type of runner in each time range?

jtupper-ware wrote:

It sounds to be as though some posters are confusing the terms AEROBIC threshold with ANAEROBIC threshold. Aerobic threshold occurs at a pace that is close to marathon pace...it is EASY.

ANAEROBIC threshold occurs at a pace that is around 10 mile race pace, or a pace you could hold for about an hour.

It would appear that it is you who is confused, my friend. Marathon pace is actually quite close to one's anaerobic threshold, not their aerobic threshold.

20 seconds of marathon pace is way too fast for aerobic threshold. I can run a marathon in 2:35, that is just under 6:00 pace, which means my AT (aerobic threshold) pace is just under 6:20. I can tell you right now, my HR would be up around 160 at that pace. Aerobic threshold is between 130 and 150 BPM (seems to be the concensus), which for me, would be between 7:00 and 9:00 pace. So AT pace is 1-3 minutes off of marathon pace, depending on the conditions.

For all of you are are freaking out, I think maybe just re-read the post. jtupper-ware said Aerobic Threshold runs are run at 140-145 beats per minute. I think we all agree that not hard.

Secondly, some people were previously confusing aerobic and anaerobic threshold runs. He simply clarified that your Aerobic threshold runs are closer to marathon pace than anaerobic threshold pace, which obviously is true.

I had a heart rate monitor....then I threw it away and ran better.

When talking bpm with heart rates it just really depends on the person (how stressed they are at AT).

It also depends on economy and your training history, etc.

"AT" is on the "easy end" of the training pace spectrum...but in terms of velocity it can feel slightly fast....maybe how you feel when you're actually in a marathon race (during the first half only of course). You should feel good, in control...but you're moving faster than just some simple easy/recovery day. When I said about 20sec per mile slower than marathon race pace I may have been a little off...for some people it might be closer to 40sec per mile slower...but it may depend on the day........and considering the facts that you might not run marathons that often, you would have to estimate what you COULD run for a marathon the week you do your AT run(s). Guessing what you could run for the marathon, or by going off of what your all time marathon PR pace was 3 years ago isn't going to be very accurate.

I'm thoroughly confused after reading this entire thread. I thought I knew what the different thresholds were, but it's possible my definitions were just wrong. Someone try to answer this for me in terms of paces, preferably relative to 5k pace since I have no idea what I could run for a marathon:

-Aerobic Threshold

-Anaerobic Threshold

-Lactate Threshold

I thought aerobic threshold pace was roughly 5k pace + 1:00 - certainly not easy. But perhaps I was confused, and 5k pace + 1:00 was actually anaerobic threshold, while aerobic threshold is slower. I'm fairly certain lactate threshold is 5k pace + :25-:30, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

FrontRunner wrote:

I'm thoroughly confused after reading this entire thread. I thought I knew what the different thresholds were, but it's possible my definitions were just wrong. Someone try to answer this for me in terms of paces, preferably relative to 5k pace since I have no idea what I could run for a marathon:

-Aerobic Threshold

-Anaerobic Threshold

-Lactate Threshold

I thought aerobic threshold pace was roughly 5k pace + 1:00 - certainly not easy. But perhaps I was confused, and 5k pace + 1:00 was actually anaerobic threshold, while aerobic threshold is slower. I'm fairly certain lactate threshold is 5k pace + :25-:30, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

You're not alone. In fact, exercise physiologists STILL can't decide an appropriate term for the 2 thresholds, or even if they exist (thank Dr. Noakes for that one). Basically, there are two thresholds and what they are called depends (usually) on how they are determined:

Aerobic threshold (aka. Lactate threshold 1 (LT1), Ventilatory threshold 1 (VT1), 2mM threshold etc.).

This is the "easy" pace we have been describing in this thread. It is the first significant departure of lactate from rest and is usually between 1.2-2mM and is usually at a heartrate of 140-145. I have tested dozens of middle distance and distance runners and their AeT differs by 2-3 beats (143+/-3 bpm). The velocity at which this occurs, however, is significantly different.

Anaerobic threshold (aka LT2, VT2, 4mM threshold, etc). is the point at which the maximum amount of lactate that can be produced and cleared, usually between 3.5-4mM. It is "steady state" in that lactate remains the same throuhgout the exercise intensity. Running above this threshold will result in an exponential increase in lactate in the muscles and blood and running velocity will soon slow. It usually occurs at around 160 bpm (again, testing our athletes, I have seen 163+/-3 bpm).

For a comprehensive review on the subject see the following article:

Svedahl, K. and MacIntosh, B.R. (2003). Anaerobic threshold: concept and method of measurement. Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, 28(2), 299-323.

As far as the significance of training at, below or above these thresholds depends on the training adaptations you are looking for. As, I believe runningart has elunded to, how much time you spend at these thresholds will result in specific and predictable adaptations to different physiological systems.

From USATF:

Aerobic Threshold = approximately 65% Vo2 Max

Anaerobic (or Lactate) Threshold = approximately 85% Vo2 Max

Aerobic Threshold Continuous Running

-Heart Rate of 130-140 bpm

-Fatty Acids are primary fuel source

-1 to 3 hours in duration

-24-48 hours recovery time

Lactate/Anaerobic Threshold

-Between 65% and 85% Vo2 Max

-HR between 140 and 170 bpm

-20 min to 2 hours in duration

-Continuous runs @ 65-75& Vo2 Max up to 2 hours

-Continuous runs @ 75-80% Vo2 Max from 40 to 90 minutes

-Continuous runs @ 80-90$ Vo2 Max from 20 to 40 minutes

The major question I have about all of this is:

DOES TRAINING AT AEROBIC THRESHOLD IMPROVE AEROBIC GAINS BETTER THAN TRAINING ABOVE THE AEROBIC THRESHOLD?

and by aerobic gains, I mean:

-increased capillarization

-increased mitochondria size/number

-increased heart rate, stroke volume and cardiac output

-etc.

It just boggles my mind that USATF, the governing body of track and field, advocates running between 130 and 140 bpm for all of your easy runs. Specifically because no one runs even close to that slow for any training, save maybe warmups and warmdowns.

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