Is Noakes wrong?

So you became a world class runner?

No, did you?

Only as a masters runner. But I think that helped me to know the difference between average and unlocking the potential of the awesome runner within.

Well golly, I had no idea I was talking to a real world class runner. What's your name? Can I look up your performances?

You could be like a running version of Tony Robbins with that last sentence. Maybe you should write a book or something. Wouldn't gibe too well with Noakes but you could make a fortune!

Runningart2004 wrote:

"and should atheletes train any differently because of his theory? not really"

This is the only important thing said in this whole thread. Who cares if the chicken or the egg comes first as long as it gets across the street right?

Alan

wake up wrote:

The very first sentence in the first post of the thread says it's a trivial topic. Why not learn a little about human physiology. It's not going to hurt you.

No, YOU need to wake up. RunningArt has a Masters in Exercise Physiology. Art gets it. He has a very valid point.

Nah, I'm a lousy writer, I just can't seem to get my points accross. Would you consider being my ghost writer?

Deal!

I had to Google Tony Robbins, I didn't know who he was.

I think motivational speaking may sound very inspirational to most people, but unless you really want to reach the top in whatever, it won't make the slightest difference to the way you live your life.

So to the question, does belief in a Central Governor make any difference to the training? The answer has to be: only if you want it to.

I suppose the Central Governor hypothesis has been around in one form or another for as long as runners have been competing, thousands of years.

It's certainly never made any difference to my training. Has it made any difference to yours?

What I've always thought about competing is pretty close to what Tom said. But then again, I don't hear Tom telling me that some mechanism in my brain is choosing my opening pace for me or keeping me from surging at any point I feel like it. Regardless that "model" doesn't affect how I train.

But I started my running in sneakers the days of all cotton before GPS-es and heart rate monitors. I embrace the utility of all the advances in technology we have as well as in understanding of what makes the body tick but I think the moment you let any of that dictate how you're going to race, you've stopped really racing.

Looks like you don't need a ghost writer after all

No, YOU need to wake up. RunningArt has a Masters in Exercise Physiology. Art gets it. He has a very valid point.[/quote]

So a guy with a Masters degree in physiology comes on here to argue that it is pointless to discuss what limits the body during excercise. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a while.

It's amusing to me to read the posts on this topic. First of all, many of the posts are completely out of date - the notion that the central governor exists to prevent anaerobiosis is about 4 years old now. Science has moved on, and this concept of a little black box that protects the heart is history, yesterday's news. The latest work on the topic describes a completely different model, so do try to read it before you form an uneducated opinion.

As for the repeated references to "a lack of evidence", read the scientific literature and you will see that there is substantial evidence that is being gathered to support the notion that exercise is regulated rather than limited. And the evidence does not only come from Noakes' unit, but from all over the world.

What people need to appreciate is that the classic theory that lactate forces you to slow down cannot explain what is observed during exercise. May I ask two questions of the 'experts' on the forum?

1. can you please explain why it is that the fastest lap of a 10 000 m world record (or the last kilometer of the marathon) is always the final lap? Bear in mind that lactate levels are at their highest at the end of the race, and so is the so-called 'oxygen deficit'. So if the theory that you slowed down because of lactate 'poisoning the muscles' was true, there would be no chance of speeding up at the end. Can anyone explain this to me?

2. Can you please explain why the events that are most affected by altitude are the longest ones? Is it not true that as the distance increases, the relative intensity falls, and so the marathon is performed at an intensity that IS LESS THAN VO2MAX? Now, if you are running at less than maximum oxygen uptake, why would you slow down when the oxygen availability goes down? Answer - you wouldn't. Instead, the events that would suffer the most would be the 800m and 1500 m events, because they are the ones that are run at near maximal oxygen consumption. So taking oxygen away would affect them more. Now, you can't explain that using some classic theory of oxygen deficit causing fatigue.

The point then is that the classic theory fails to account for certain observations. Therefore, science's responsbility is to attempt to devise models that address these inconsistencies. That is the path of progress in science - find an abberation or anomaly, then devise models to explain it. That's what Noakes did in 1996, and since then evidence has been gathered to prove it.

Unfortunately, the people who post on this forum do not read the literature thoroughly enough to understand it, and so they argue from a position of what can only be called ignorance.

So guys, get educated, and then let's talk.

The way I see it is that very few of us get anywhere near our genetic potential. You have to keep believing and keep exploring the possibilities.

If you are a distance runner who has not run many 60 second laps in your life, but you can run under 14 seconds for 100m, then you haven't been working hard enough.

I think too many people take Lydiardism to mean that fast running will do us more harm than good.

The way I see it, the more calories you burn at an easy to moderate intensity, the more basic fitness you have, and the more fast running you can do.

Almost all of my team mates train too hard week after week year after year, and no matter how much I try to tell them to do otherwise, it ain't going to happen, because they don't really care about achieving anywhere near their potential. I think 99.9% of runners are the same, and that's why Noakes is getting such a bad rap for telling us to think differently.

Ross, I suggest you take your own advice and actually read Noakes' central governor literature, that might help you to answer your own quetions.

one thing I hate about noakes' book is how much he's on Jim Peter's nuts. The way he defends his failures at the olympics and the empire games-its like he's married to the guy. and other south african atheletes-who cares. I mean, in his notable runner's section, he has bruce fordyce but not coe. or haile or tergat or anyone since about 1990. But wait! he does have mark allen, a triathelete. and numerous other ultramarathoners that most runners do not give a flying f*** about... thanks Timmy! And a chapter almost a hundred pages long about running in the heat, while not mentioning how to train for anything under 10 kilometers, which is what many runners train for. Heaven forbid a runner wants to run indoor track-you would have to run 6.2 miles. And milers-no luck with timmy's book. although you can read about the central governor, marathoning and how to measure your temperture rectally at the end of a race-YAY! useful reading material prought to you by Timmothy "I-wrote-a-really-long-book-full-of-useless-theories-and-unf***INGuseable-information-for-anyone-who-does-not-run-ultras" NOAKES

The CG theory might work to explain the "idiot savants" who just seemed too dumb to feel pain in a race and ran beyond their apparent abilities. I won't name names, but we've all known someone like this I think.

The interesting thing is that they rarely seem to last more than a few years at a high level and then quit and get fat.

A long-term sort of Governor?

Ross-

To answer your questions:

1. World-class 10,000-meter runners are running AT their lactate threshold through the entire race, not over it. The acidosis is not high enough to be deleterious to their pace. Also, their physiology is developed to handle acidosis during exercise. They have a supreme "plumbing system", so to speak. Therefore, if they paced correctly through the race, they can kick the last 400m or whatever and not worry about the elevated pH prohibiting them.

2. Your evaluation of running at altitude is incorrect. Lesser intense, aerobic efforts DO become harder and you DO slow down. Because the oxygen availability is less, more blood needs to be pumped to working muscles per unit time, heart rate increases, and therefore efforts at a certain pace become harder. That pace you ran at a certain % VO2max at sea level would be at a higher % VO2max at altitude. Very short, intense efforts would not change. Your examples- 800m or 1500m- aren't very good examples of "very short efforts" because they are still largely aerobic. The 1500m time would surely increase, and the 800 time would likely increase; anything over 2 min in duration would suffer due to altitude. Efforts lasting less than 2 min (100m, 200m, 400m)- that is, efforts relying on the phosphagen pool (ATP-CP) or fast glycolysis would be largely unchanged by altitude (especially very brief, explosive efforts). Keep in mind that maximal oxygen consumption may be the same at sea level and altitude, but because of what I just said, the pace will NOT be the same. And that's why the 800 and 1500 runners would also suffer.

I am a student of exercise physiology, by the way- you'd see this in any textbook.

It would comments like this that keep the kolks like Noakes off the boards. He wrote to tell me that your opinion of Peters/Noakes made him laugh but not so much...

Like so many other threads that could be great this may turn out more negative then positive in the end

"World-class 10,000-meter runners are running AT their lactate threshold through the entire race, not over it."

Is this an April fools joke? I would like to see you produce some evidence to support this. The fact is, you can't! It doesn't matter who you are, you will be over your LT throughout a 10K race. In fact, if you look in the literature you will see that lactate continously increases during a 10K time trial run at a fairly constant pace. In other words, the 10K pace is over the lactate steady state pace.

If this is true, what about world class marathoners? But according to you, in 10K runners, "The acidosis is not high enough to be deleterious to their pace. Also, their physiology is developed to handle acidosis during exercise." I guess that would mean the marathoners also can run at the same pace as they would for a 10K!

"I am a student of exercise physiology"

Another April fools joke.

"by the way- you'd see this in any textbook"

That's the problem, you need to read the research!

Tim Noakes of the World Central Governor Bank his decreed a world wide decrease in the interest rates charged on oxygen debts as a measure to decrease inflation on this message board.

April Fools

Tom