double threshold is the most overrated thing in running

It is (to put it mildly) interesting and somewhat sad (IMO) if one is going to all the trouble and expense to demonstrate lactate testing in a workout video, that they don’t take the additional step to also show/plot the heart rate data (relative to HRmax), because it seems like a no-brainer to me.

If you have such data available, or know how of any online sources (video or otherwise), I’d be happy to review.

Coach Pollard discusses runner physiology, including the relationship of paces and heart rate (mentioning lactate testing as well), in the following video:

I share some data on the TrainerRoad forum in the Lactate Testing and Results thread. I have lots of test data on myself (about 250 samples over the past 3 years)...I should spend some time cleaning up the data and presenting it. I've done lots of ramps, constant-rate tests, VLaMax tests, sprint sessions to see how high I could get lactate, etc. Lots of cool stuff you can do with a meter and some imagination.

At this point which of these are more overrated:

1. Double Threshold Training
2. Doubles
3. Intervals

What do you think you’re going to learn by the addition of this highly individualized variable that’s going to give you more or better information about training at lactate threshold?

Sure, the individual should know their numbers and correlation to a given lactate but not sure how much that’s going to help an observer.

When you start testing lactate and observe the HR response when you’re in the different ‘ballparks’ youll notice some interesting trends when you are in a steady state vs a non steady state. but these will be noticed with experience not by observing someones elses #s which are arbitrary for the most part when it comes to your own training

If you're talking about men, that's so unnecessary. To get a man to 2:30 marathon you could take the ingebrigtsen threshold workouts and do only one of them a day instead of two. Then replace the speedy Saturday with an easy long run. That's all the stimulus necessary to get someone to 2:30. Getting to 2:20, 2:15, 2:10 and lower would be the level where higher training loads become necessary, like putting a tempo into the long run, doing doubles, or increasing the volume or intensity of the workouts and keeping them singles.

Amateur runners trying to copy pro training by adjusting the paces is a direct path to overtraining and a plateau. Especially when they don't adjust by time, because a 10 x 1k for a pro is under 30mins of work but for a 3:00 marathoner it's 40mins of work. But even if you are wiser and copy the workouts by time, you can't do as many minutes at X intensity as a pro can. They're genetically gifted and have spent years building up to the point where Y minutes at X intensity per week is tolerable and beneficial.

This thread has become 'how many angels can dance on the end of a pin?' for running geeks. But no one can explain why runners continue to get so much faster on a training method that has been around for decades, that Zatopek was doing.

Did Zatopek begin systematic training at close to ten years of age as did, for example, Jakob Ingebrigtsen? Did Zatopek use a lactate meter to limit his intensity as do so many runners today doing double sessions of lactate threshold training?

Yet again you have donned your PED goggles.

I love when ppl make silly statements like this.

Show everyone how these old timey training regimes are the same with data that is objective and can be measured or stop making the comparison.

One of the best parts about the model is it provides data that you can track over time to actually measure stress and not just guess.

These type of threads away get the usual silly responses like above. ‘oh this training is just like this successful guy at this time. just like this other guy’.

The usual unfalsifiable claim since we dont have great data or comparable data from these other ppl to ever compare one way or the other.

Ppl today still cant even agree on how much mileage previous greats used to do. ‘oh they didnt count these slow miles’ So i dont see a ton of value trying to compare highly trackable, comparable modern training techniques with past methods much of which is partially based in lore and anecdotes

Thank you! I get that talent is a factor but was hoping that for talentless people the training could still be modified similarly to at least *improve what little they do have* and keep them engaged with the sport!

So it isn't threshold training that is the key, it is starting at 10 years of age? But then why do so many age-group prodigies never become top pro's on the same kind of training as Jakob? They started young, too. If it's a "lactate" meter then that must be the key and everyone will be using one. Such pseudoscientific bs. No - it's doping, as usual. As Jakob clearly does.

Jakob may be doping, but this is not pseudoscientific bs. You just don't know anything about training.

Hey! You thought cross-training = treadmill running!!!

You are out of your depth here. Do yourself, and everyone else, a favor and leave.

But if Zatopek was doing threshold training, for all its vaunted benefits, he should have been way faster than E African women runners today. But he wasn't. If today athletes can train more often, for longer and with greater intensity it is because they are doped. However, serious training has easily been the nature of the sport since Elliott's era. (He said he in part retired because of its demands.) It isn't the training methods which explain the continuous and dramatic improvements in the decades that followed.

You are ignorant.

What is "pseudoscientific bs" is the insistence here that a particular training method explains increases in modern performances. It clearly doesn't. It has been around for decades. And some of the very best didn't and haven't employed it.

The only "depths" that exist here are your fantasies.

BTW, I didn't think cross training was only treadmill running. But it necessarily includes it. If an athlete isn't running on the road or across country they have to be running somewhere, because just lifting weights, or whatever, won't do it (even though Elliott also did weights). Fans like you think like children, who cling to fairy stories.

Clearly, that isn't the case. But you are lost for an argument.

“if” right if he was doing this. Serious training can be anything the while thread has been predicated on one type of ‘serious’ training.

And yes athletes can train longer and smarter and recover better today. science and technology can explain a lot of that right off the top. You can manage and quantify load more scientifically, shoes are clearly better, recovery and nutrition are clearly better— all advantages and advances you should be expecting after 50+ of research and development

FFS ppl are now coming to the realization they didnt even know how many miles they were really running until GPS came out. the level of precision and metrics today vs previous years is just off the charts

Thanks for proving once again that you don't know what cross-training is.

Fans like me spend several hours a day coaching kids and adults. What do you do for our sport? Absolutely nothing.

I am not. You know nothing about training. You are ignorant.