Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Cool

Appreciate this and previous post as someone also pretty FT (800/1500 runner mostly but background in sprints and always found going up in distance got weaker races). Interesting to base on Sirpoc as he's definitely ST with big engine from cycling. Personally found even just looking at pace charts based on shorter races almost certainly too fast to be sustainable at 3x a week. Curious how you calculated paces, as I've found lots of great data between thread and Strava group but biggest issue has been adapting it to myself and figuring out what can be sustainable over months of summer and into fall to really reap benefits.

MoVB

Working in a far more competitive environment in a country with much greater income inequality, I of course get paid more than Seiler.

As for cardiac drift, as I said many times before, it is simply a fact of life, both below and above so-called "LT1" (although of course greater at higher vs. lower intensities). Consider, for example, this classic study by Gunnar Ahlborg:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Substrate turnover during prolonged exercise in man. Splanchnic and leg metabolism of glucose, free fatty acids, and amino acids - PubMed

Arterial concentrations and substrate exchange across the leg and splanchnic vascular beds were determined for glucose, lactate, pyruvate, glycerol, individual acidic and neutral amino acids, and free fatty acids (FFA) in six...

Link:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4815076/

Despite the fact that the participants were exercising at only 30% of VO2max (not really much above a fast walk), such that lactate concentrations never rose significantly above resting levels, HR rose from 104 beats/min after 40 min of exercise to 129 beats/min after 240 min.

Of course, training diminishes cardiac drift, such that you might not see such a large change in more highly trained individuals (although note that VO2peak while cycling averaged 52+/5 mL/min/kg in these non-cyclists, meaning that their VO2max was 55-60 mL/min/kg). Nonetheless, what these (and numerous other) data demonstrate is that there is really no connection between changes in blood lactate and cardiac drift (nor would you expect one in the first place).

ETA: Here's another example, this time in ultramarathon runners tested on a treadmill at 65-70% of VO2max over the same duration.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Physiological responses to prolonged exercise in ultramarathon athletes - PubMed

The physiological responses of 10 ultramarathon athletes to prolonged exercise at the highest intensity level they could sustain for 4 h have been examined. Energy expenditure for the 4 h of exercise was 14,146 +/- 1,789 kJ,...

Link:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3745051/

Despite the fact that:

"Blood lactic acid concentration (LA) remained relatively unchanged during the 4 h of exercise and close to resting values. After 45 min of exercise LA was 0.6 +/- 0.2 mmol/l compared with 0.7 +/- 0.2 mmol/l at the 165th min and 0.9 +/- 0.3 mmol/l at the end of the exercise period (Fig. 1)."

significant cardiac drift still took place:

"Cardiac frequency (fn) rose as a linear function of time from the 80th to the 240th min:

fn (beats/min) = 143 + 0.124 t (min); r = 0.99"

[(240-80)*0.124 = 20 beats/min, or from 143 to 163 beats/min.]

Well I must be an outlier, starting at 6min per km after 20mins, then 90mins later I’m running at 5min per km with the same heart rate, my zone 1 / 2 is 123 beats per min, so my runs are at 118-120 for the easy and long runs. I get to 2 hours and still the same hr so decide fast finish. And no, there is nothing wrong with my HR monitor

explain?

You think Coggan will give you an actual answer? He will spin it into something he wants to talk about. Maybe lexel is his anonymous troll account. Didn't take him long to mention his salary. Wait until he brings up his made up million $ grants. He's so jealous of Seiler, Seiler lives in his head. Even when Seiler is correct, to Coggan he has to be wrong. It's quite sad.

In real Biology terms, that statement is only half true. May I request you make it complete?

You're just as bad as he is.

..of reductive nonsense too.

Lexel and Coggan are both attention seekers. They are both "LoOk aT hOw SmArT wE aRe". This thread obviously has a life of its own and hundreds and hundreds of readers. Potentially thousands if you think there's almost 500 alone in the Strava group. So they have a captive audience. Lexel is obviously just making a fool of himself, everytime he posts. If I were him, I would ask for my account to be deleted and just start again. His credibility is just zero at this ooint. Even if he makes a good point, it is hard to take it seriously. Those good points are now incredibly rare these days. He's just in some sort of endless loop and obsession he can't get out of.

Coggan? I'm kind of disappointed. I expected more. Most of his stuff is pretty weak scientifically and random studies of stuff that probably provide no practical use to already semi fit athletes training a decent amount, which is most of this thread.

No, you're not necessarily an outlier. As I said, training reduces cardiac drift, which is lower at lower intensities. Fit individuals may therefore be able to exercise for quite a while before HR increases noticably. It will, however, do so eventually.

Regardless, the key point is that there is no logic to using the absence/presence of cardiac drift to regulate exercise intensity. Doing so may mean training too easily, or it may even mean training too hard.

I have no idea what you mean.

Trev the troll brought up income. I was just correcting his false claim.

"Weak" to the tune of helping bring in >$1M/y in grant money for more than four decades.

But, yes, you're right, much (not all) of my research is of little use to athletes. As I have pointed out on multiple occasions, I am an exercise physiologist, not a #sportsscientist.

Apparently Trev the Troll has gone to sleep and so have his numerous personalities...

Thank you, i have now a better understanding what you mean.

Your statement is still not correct (bold text). 'Threshold' is the result of LT%, VO2max and CR (cost of running). Where we agree on is that VO2max is a central fitness factor.

LT% is a peripheral factor, muscle fiber typology, and we have CR where also the brain seems to play a role.

So we have a central, a peripheral and also a central governor factor included and all that defines LTv!!

Look at the paper i shared (Stoa, 2020), where Elite athletes have a VO2max in the range of 4.42 +- 1.15 L/min, 71.2 +-8.3ml/kg/min. That is a big range. The Elite athletes with the lower VO2max can only compete by having a better running economy and/or a higher LT%.

So it is individual and it depends. Which factor is more important is not so easy to distinguish. All three factors have their importance.

Honestly lexel. Admittedly it was a troll, but you got given good advice. Just quit at this point. You are like a sailboat in the wind, stuck going round in circles with no clear identity or direction. You have pretty much nailed your mast to 4-5 ways of interpreting the papers you continue to post. You have no idea what you mean at this point, we don't. Please man, for the love of the rest of us who enjoy and want to learn how to actually run faster from this thread. Please just give it a rest. Maybe it's a language barrier. But your posts are genuinely bordering on nonsense and we are just going round in circles.

I do actually agree with this thread. I've found it awesome, simple and practical. Lexel and Coggan really are offering none of the above. Hard2find even gave lexel the attention he wants in another thread, but he won't even reply to that because he knows he can't win the hill he wants to die on and it won't give him the attention he craves, as another posted pointed out. Nobody cared about lexels thread before , his original one. It's best people just stop replying to him and feeding his ego. Giving him the light of day and replies is what he wants.

Of course there is individual variation - so what? That doesn't alter general conclusions about what limits endurance performance in homo sapiens.

"Threshold" can be quantified in various ways, but the reason I have used quotes is because I have been talking about the concept, not any specific implementation thereof. Fiber type may be one contributing factor, but it's mostly about muscle respiratory capacity. In that regard, a trained individual who has more type II fibers can very well be superior to an untrained person with lots of type I fibers.

Running economy has nothing to do with Noakes' flawed hypothesis of a "central governor". Instead, it most closely related to things like leg spring stiffness, the distance between the ankle joints and the insertion of the Achilles tendon, etc. IOW, more the biophysics of tissue properties than motor control.

Finally, part of the reason that it is difficult to sort out these factors is that they are interrelated, making any distinctions somewhat arbitrary. Again, consider muscle respiratory capacity: on the one hand, it is the key determinant of the metabolic response to exercise ("threshold"), but on the other it likely also influences VO2max, by helping maintain O2 extraction despite reduced capillary mean transit time. But, building conceptual models like the "three-legged stool" is how humans make sense of data, even if at the end of the day they are an imperfect representation of reality.

Ok now we are getting somewhere. This is actually an interesting and useful post to be fair. The concept of running economy has interested me for a long time and flawed is how I have always thought of populist or widespread views of it. The rest of your post I also pretty much agree with. Lexel, over to you......