Double Whammy? Hadd do you know what he is taking about

Excuse me. Without disagreement with you, let me insist once again. A shift to the right in the lactate curve COULD be caused by all 9. to 13. But simply could be caused also by the improve in running economy - less oxygen consumption need in the same pace intensity.

No comment about that?

Dear Reason,

Thank you so much for listing all 13 reasons that the lactate curve can shift. I did not want to have to list them myself. They are not in his book, and you have to sit down and think about each one and write them down, very tedious.

Antonio,

I am aware of the value of increasing efficiency. The problem with efficiency is you can't measure it, so you can't quantify it. Of course an increase in efficiency could show up as an increase in the anaerobic threshold, since less effort is now required to run at the same speed. I guess it is really just a balancing act. If you loose aerobic conditioning, but gain efficiency, they may cancel each other out, in which case it doesn't really matter, since all we care about is performance. Increasing both would of course be ideal, and this is always the goal. I think for our discussion as it pertains to the shifts in the lactate curve that we can stick with the 13 possible outcomes for a shift. It is already complex enough, we don't need to make it worse.

Efficiency training is definitely something we should talk about though. I believe that it can come naturally by training at many different running speeds and at many different distances. Of course there is no replacement for training at race pace.

Please discuss.

Balance

Don´t misunderstand me. If i mention running economy/efficience that´s not to dismiss the interest of the LT training in the training context. Besides i agree that´s not easy to measure running economy in terms of pace efficiency, despite that you mention frequently the need of tests - but in a lab we can measure the oxygen consumption in an X pace intensity.

I also agree that a good way to improve running efficiency are long runs in Lt pace intensity.

What I call your attention is that besides that the 13 points from Reason that may be all a mistake, and the same is true in what concerns to Olbrecht, – most of Obrecht training analysis is done in the swimming sport – and since in swim sport the body movements – in different swim styles – are so determinant for the oxygen consumption – in by opinion you can´t simply ignore that fact.

The same in the all data that Olbrecht considers. Lactic acid meter, or aerobic or anaerobic, whatever. We may think that swim is like skiing. Not just the distance events are different than running events, but also the fact the upper body in swim is so predominant as the lower body, and also the fact that they swim in the horizontal.

In my opinion, without deny the interest of a deep lactic acid and LT analysis we can exclude all possibilities or that can turn on to be a wrong training direction. A correct training investigation may consider all changes. Think that in a single case we get the conclusion that the AnT training is good in that runner because we see a shift to the right in the lactate curve. And we prescribe more of that LT training, but the fact is that the runner improved his shift to the right in the lactate curve, mainly because he does a better oxygen consumption that he gains from anaerobic improving capacity (points 11 to 13 from Reason) – thus from anaerobic training and not from the improve of his anaerobic condition. We would believe: a good improvement in the anaerobic threshold by the use of LT runs. Simply. we miss the cause and the consequence.

Are you aware of the chance that you may take the wrong conclusions?

Antonio,

Would you please clarify what you mean in your last paragraph. I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say. Language barrier and all. I mean no disrespect and I am very interested to hear your response.

I am still trying to decide whether or not I am going to say yes or no to you final question.

I might be wrong about this, but here goes. If as Antonio puts it the person had an impovement in running economy and uses less oxygen at a given pace you would still have a shift in the lactate curve to the right. If all else remained the same, the same submax pace would yield a lower lactate level. Yet at the same time the persons anaerobic capacity may not have changed since it's only their economy we are talking about changing. This would still result in a shift to the right with improved aerobic capacity (from improved economy) and no change in anaerobic capacity. This should yield faster race times and would still be one of the 13 reasons for the shift.

Paul

Antonio,

I believe only point 11 concerns your point about a possible change in oxygen consumption, but I believe you misinterpret reason's interpretation. He is actually unclear on this point unfortunately. He should have said an increase in aerobic capacity with an increase in anaerobic capacity that is not as great as the increase in aerobic capacity.

Also an increase in oxygen consumption is an increase in aerobic capacity, so I am unsure what your point is. I do not believe anaerobic training can increase aerobic capacity. It may increase aerobic power, which just means that the runner can maintain the speed that utilizes the maximum consumption of oxygen longer. A huge increase in mitochondria is mostly responsible for this.

I may just be misinterpreting you. So again please clarify.

Paul,

Close, except that a shift to the right does not necessarily mean that aerobic capacity has increased, especially when the shift could be due to an increase in efficiency.

Antonio is correct that you can not just interpret the shift to the right as being an increase in aerobic capacity for just this reason. This would then not be one of the 13 reasons for a shift in the lactate curve. It would be anouther reason, since it has noting to do with lactate measurements, which is what the 13 points are relavant to. Don't get confused, there could be many more reasons for the shift in the lactate curve, but none of them are usable as far as interpreting lactate values from tests are concerned.

The lactate curve is basically just a graph of lactate measurements plotted for various speeds. If you connect the dots you get what looks like a curve. It is not a real physiological attribute and it can be argued that it does not really mean anything. This is why Olbrecht just picks an arbitrary lactate level of 4 mmol/l and then tests the speed that this occurs over time. This assists him in determining whether or not there is an increase or a decrease in the aerobic capacity. It is much more accurate than trying to figure out where the anaerobic threshold actually occurs. You can only really kind of guess by looking at where the curve seems to substantially start to curve up. An increase in the speed at 4 mmol/l represents an increase in aerobic capacity as long as the anaerobic capacity does not increase or does not increase as much as the aerobic capacity. Since it is very hard to figure out where the anaerobic threshold is, it is probably best just to run by feel and there may be no need to actually test for it.

What I really meant was that it was kind of irrelevant as to why the shift occured, be it an increase in economy, or an increase in aerobic capacity. You would never know that unless you tested the person for consumption of O2. In any case it's likely if this shift occured, for whatever reason, it wouldn't likely affect your decission making as to the persons training direction.

Does it really matter if the shift occured because of economy, or aerobic capacity increases? Likely not from what I can tell. Though I'm not as knowledgable on this stuff as you guys are.

Ok Paul, I get what you are trying to say. I misunderstood you, sorry. I was basically trying to say the same thing. Antoinio's point is still important though. I guess you are right about testing for VO2max, to help determine the change. That is much more difficult than lactate testing though. You need a lab for that. Lactate testing is very easy to do, which makes it practical as well as valuable.

Thanks Daniel Flower to help me. But now i see that´s not only a language problem but a problem of concepts.

""...Antonio puts it the person had an impovement in running economy and uses less oxygen at a given pace you would still have a shift in the lactate curve to the right. If all else remained the same, the same submax pace would yield a lower lactate level. Yet at the same time the persons anaerobic capacity may not have changed since it's only their economy we are talking about changing. This would still result in a shift to the right with improved aerobic capacity (from improved economy) and no change in anaerobic capacity...""

I agree with what Daniel says except that the last idea...and no change in anaerobic capacity. Lets assume that the anaerobic capacity doesn´t change, but in this my analysis the anaerobic capacity is out of consideration. Lets just focus in my point - that we read the lactic meter under the same earlier conditions (weather etc etc) and for the same pace intensity the curve to the right occurs later in time duration, and that relate to an early test(s) that curve know turns to the right in a lower mmol value/less lactic acid concentration. Our first look to the test is that ther´s an improvement in anaerobic thershold due to the training plan trought direct effect of that the training in the aerobic condition - eventually LT training is included in the training plan. But the reson to have a good lactate test than earlier on that´s because you did improve your running efficiency. In my example, haven´t been improvement trought more aerobic capacity in "strict sense" or trought direct aerobic training results, but by the indirect and the involuntary training effect by the use of less oxygen for the same pace. That "less use of oxygen to run in the same pace intensity" wich promotes the ability to run faster in a large range distance event that the oxygen are used haven´t to do with have nothing to do with maxVO2 or with anaerobic condition or anaerobic power.

In the last Daniel post

""...You would never know that unless you tested the person for consumption of O2. In any case it's likely if this shift occured, for whatever reason, it wouldn't likely affect your decission making as to the persons training direction...""

I agree with the last Daniels sentence - that´s what i try to say since a long ago, that the analysis of a training direction can´t be measured mainly by lactic acid tests - because we don´t know what´s the - source (as to say) of the improvement of the aerobic condition - if that´s a direct effect by training of the LT runs or if that´s by the indirect influence by running economy. And if that´srunning economy what´s in the training whole package -mileage, workouts, frequency, what the contribute of each training element for running economy ? We don´t know.

But i don´t agree with Daniel first sentence "ááYou would never know that unless you tested the person for consumption of O2. O2 comsumption may measure oxygen uptake - by unity of time - . but once again we don´t know if that improvement in due to Lt training or to running efficiency. less oxygen consuption due to more efficient running mouvements (more efficient steps that promotes less use of oxygen by a lesser use of energy. We don´t know.

Conclusion, WE only are able to pressume that by training LT runs and thata when have a better lactic acid test results, that´s by the direct use of that type of training that we improve our shape condition. We can´t take for granteed that are the LT runs that improves lactic acid test results.

One more information. Despite that to test the contribute of running efficiency for the O2 comsumption in the running exercises that can´t be done in a treadmill - different mouvements - actually there are a machine parafernalia that can measure oxigen consumption outdoor in a run. French physilogist Madame Billat (and coach) she have that machine apparatus that the runner uses as back pack, and he can run outdoors, because that´s not heavy.

Keep on this good discussion.

There is another interesting thread about lactate going on in these boards. Go check it out. Anyway, I thought I’d post what I posted in the other thread since I believe it has relevance to what we have been talking about here.

In the other thread someone mentioned how how pyruvate is converted to lactate to be used as fuel by the mucles. Actually it is the other way around. Lactate is produced by the muscles in relation to the level of glycolysis. Lactate can not be used as a fuel. It must be converted to pyruvate in order for it to be utilized by the muscles. The Pyruvate is utilized in the presence of oxygen, so this is an aerobic process. The aerobic capacity is the limiting factor in the utilization of the pyruvate. So there is such thing as not having enough oxygen to support the activity. Once you can no longer utilize pyruvate as fuel, it is then converted back into lactate. If this continues to occur your muscles will become too acidic, and cellular activity will cease in the muscles, because enzymes can not function in this environment. Ultimately your aerobic capacity is your limiting factor to performance, which is what Lydiard has been raving about all of these years. Lactate is valuable in that it produces energy faster than your other energy sources can. This becomes more significant the shorter and faster your race distance is. This begins the argument of whether a lack of oxygen limits performance or whether Hydrogen ions limit performance. It ultimately comes back to oxygen, because a lack of oxygen in the muscles will start you on the road to high acidity, since a hydrogen ion molecule will be produced for every lactate molecule. You wouldn't be accumulating too much lactate if your muscles could use all of the pyruvate available, and if you had enough available oxygen at all speeds you would not slow down until you ran out of glycogen that is, since glycolysis can not occur without it.

I'd like to pose a question, is there really such a thing as an anaerobic capacity, or is this just perhaps the wrong term to describe glycolysis?

I think perhaps we should refer to anaerobic capacity as glycolysis capacity. We do not produce lactate due to a lack of oxygen. We may accumulate more lactate in the muscles due to a lack of oxygen. As far as utilizing lactate meters go, I guess we are taking an indirect measurement of oxygen debt, since the higher the oxygen debt the more lactate that will acumulate in the blood.

On the other hand perhaps anaerobic capacity is a good term to use, because if lactate readings are an indirect measurement of oxygen debt, we are measuring anaerobic capacity.

I think it all depends on how you look at it.

If one person builds up more lactate in the blood than another do we say that they have a higher anaerobic capacity because they obviously can handle greater oxygen debts? If they didn't would they be able to run long enough to build up so much lactate? Could anaerobic capacity just be a measure of pain tolerance, where more lactate is produced the longer you are in oxygen debt. This would be the amount of lactate converted back from pyruvate, as opposed to what was originally created through glycolysis. Although these would be two measures of lactate there is no way to separate the two in a test, and ultimately all of the lactate was originally created initially through glycolysis. After it was converted to pyruvate, only the unused pyruvate is converted back to lactate.

Any one else have any thoughts on all of this?

Lots of questions to ponder. Just thought I'd put it out there. Lets not let this get us off track from focusing on the training, which is what we really care about. We only look to science to help aid us.

Ultimately Olbrecht's theory is just a good and useful model that can help guide our training. It is not everything.

Balance,

I think the term anaerobic capacity is good. Though I guess you could name it glycolosis capacty. Thinking back on my training when I had lowered my anaerobic capacity considerably and did a lactate performance curve on myself I felt like I hurt just as much when finished the max part of the test. It felt as though my muscles were filled to the gills with lactate and I was unable to continue yet the reading was fairly low. I don't think pain tolorance had anything to do with it. It also could have had something to do with diet with my muscles being depleted of glycogen, so I was in distress because of this. It's hard to tell.

Another thing that could have been happening is that I had a very high aerobic capacity but not very much aerobic power, so I just didn't have any leg strength to push myself to faster paces to get into oxygen dept. My aerobic system was mopping up all the lactate yet I couldn't push myself faster.

As for the first question that you posed about the lactate levels during a mile race. I would say that the lactate levels would be highest during the second lap, but only because you incurred the debt during the first lap. It would take that long to see the lactate level come up. Then I believe it would drop off because your aerobic system began to catch up.

Paul

Paul,

I believe you are correct about the question I posed about lactate levels during a 1 mile race. I was thinking more in terms of the end of the last lap though. I guess during the second lap is the same thing though. I also believe lactate levels would be lower during the third lap, and your reasoning that the aerobic capacity has caught up and is able to utilize all the lactate produced is also correct in my estimation. However, lactate levels will probably climb to peak levels again during the last 200m of the race, when the runner is making their last all out effort with a strong kick. Thanks for thinking, and answering my question. I figured I'd make us think a little in stead of just tell everyone. On a side note I am not sure it is possible to test and see exactly what goes on in the body during a one-mile race. This would be a tough thing to do, even on a treadmill. I doubt anyone would want to attempt a good, quality race effort mile on a treadmill. Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

As for you wondering why you could not finish your test, even though your lactate levels where low. You should probably read my second to last post on the lactic acid update thread that Zuzu, Antonio, and I have been partaking in. My long physiological explanation of what may occur in the body during exercise may answer your question. Hopefully you will find this information helpful. It is nice to have an explanation for these things. It keeps us sane. By the way, I doubt we can really feel our legs swimming in lactic acid. Fatigue is fatigue, regardless of where it comes from. Our legs will probably hurt when we push them no matter what the reason is. Try to perform a maximum lift of the squat. Your leg muscles are going to hurt pretty bad during the entire lift even though you have not produced much lactate at all.

Where is every body? Oh I know, your in the lactic acid update thread.

Any body else find it odd that Hadd never tuned into this particular thread. It was originally created as a question for him in 2004. This post had its moment in the top 10 of the letsrun message board for at least one week and we never heard from him. Of course Zuzu did kind of sound like him a bit. Antonio asked if it was him, but Zuzu said no. Why am I writing all this? Maybe I am just board, or maybe I just miss the good old days with you guys. Oh well.

If not mentioned in the above text/thread (I have not read this entire thing very carefully) a shift to the right in the LT curve could be simply a lack of CHOs in the diet/body at the time of the testing. You need CHOs in the system to be able to detect their use in a test result.

Jzs,

I believe I mentioned this in the thread some where. It was not particularly harped on though. You are correct that this is something to watch out for. Lactate tests must be done during the end of a rest week when CHO is readily available. I did not mention this earlier, but it is definitely an important element of the tests. Thanks for pointing that out.

bump it, start it up again...

First let me begin by saying that this is the most amazing thread I have ever read since my discovery of letsrun.com over two years ago. I say this even though I have only been skimming through this thread and will have to finish it in the morning (It's 1:39 AM).

"I also think that there needs to be a little more of a transition between the base training of doing slow easy running with some striders to the early quality training of reps and tempo runs. Maybe some marathon paced running even done in reps just to get the specific strength a little higher. In his second edition he advises an option of switching some tempo runs for some marathon paced runs every other week. I think this will balance things out a bit more."

After reading the second Daniels' book, and trying to develope a 1600m training plan from the wealth of info contained within it, I came to the same conclusion. For the first phase I chose to Perform a 6 week period of nothing but slow easy running, getting my milage up to 50mpw for the last 3 weeks (I am coming back from a 1.5 year lay off due to a knee injury; I still have to do about 4 days per week on the elliptical trainer). In the second phase, lasing 6 weeks, I will get my mileage up to 70mpw for the last three weeks, and Mon. Wed. and Fri. will be what I call "quality aerobic runs"; 20 min Tempo runs, Marathon Paced runs, and occasionally a combo of both (such as 20 min tempo/ 20 min easy/ 20 min M pace). One or two of these runs will be followed by a set of 4-6x 200m hard w/full recovery. This may seem like too much hard work, but considering that I will be doing the other 4 days on the elliptical trainer, I think I'll be fine. I planned to do a 5k time trial at the begining of phase II in order to determing paces.

For the third phase, lasting 4 weeks, I am going to reduce mileage back to 60 per week, and replace one of the quality aerobic days with a structured fartlek workout, doing weeks 1&3 as "VO2max intervals" (such as 9x3min hard, 2 min easy), and weeks 2&4 as repetition intervals (such as 8x1 min HARD, 4 min easy).

I think the above training plan will be better than Daniels' first two 6 week periods.

Keep Posting,

Josh Ryan