Hope the testing mishaps resolved themselves for you, that's a frustrating experience. Seems in my attempt to hit the weekly calculator quota, I timed this one appropriately haha. As the name suggests, this file will model your lactate test results, along with HR data from the test if you include that. You can also select lactate values and return the associated pace and heart rate from the curve.
Ahhh, your calculator is wrong. 2 and 4 mmol/l are completely arbitrary values. This is bad for several reeasons...but the main on is that your actate meter just isn't accurate enough. Go run at 4 mmol/l in two days and lets see what the paces are. Go run at 4 mmol/l for 30 minutes and see waht your lactate does.
Why not use this? Then you get ALL the arbitrary mathematical constructions for lactate. None of which are based in physiology. They're all math.
Best way to interpret lactate tests, when done properly, is a trilinear curve.
I never said to run 2.0 and 4.0 mmol and even stated in the instructions those are arbitrary and not necessarily your LT1 and LT2 (or maybe I deleted that comment? haha), so not sure how you then conclude my calculator is wrong? Either way, you can select any values you want in that section to see what your approximate pace and HR are based on the test results. 2 mmol and 4 mmol just happen to be the two values I left it at, since they are common ones to use for a basis... If you'd like to discuss specific details though, LetsDoIt!
Anyone see sirpoc ? Look like he moved to double on Saturday. Just like KI. He even did 5k race than some speed workout in evening according Strava. Anyone speak to him know why? Maxed out load? Time for x factor?
There's someone in my local area who was a semi-professional cyclist... does 100 miles a week on the bike and only 10-15 miles of jogging (seriously) and runs parkrun every week around 16:10. Maybe I should show him this training.
Anyone see sirpoc ? Look like he moved to double on Saturday. Just like KI. He even did 5k race than some speed workout in evening according Strava. Anyone speak to him know why? Maxed out load? Time for x factor?
That was a joke. Go back and look at the post again.
Anyone see sirpoc ? Look like he moved to double on Saturday. Just like KI. He even did 5k race than some speed workout in evening according Strava. Anyone speak to him know why? Maxed out load? Time for x factor?
That was a joke. Go back and look at the post again.
In traditional training (and here), there's an idea that reps should all be done at the same pace, maybe trending faster at the end. If you have the same amount of rest every rep, wouldn't it make sense to have reps start fast and trend slower so that lactate can stay consistent? Bakken wrote a little bit about it IIRC, saying that lactate should have something like "a nice steady rise in lactate." This makes sense from a psychological perspective, as seeing each rep get slower and slower while putting in the same effort can be discouraging, but it does seem like you would get more stimulus. Can somebody explain this to me please? Really enjoying all of the information.
It's actually a bit more complicated than you've implied. At a perfectly steady pace for shortish intervals lactate will generally peak on the first couple intervals. This is because there is a delay in your body ramping up the aerobic system to begin combusting lactate at full capacity. There's a graph in science of winning illustrating this, it may be somewhere on lactate.com as well.
Therefore if you want stable lactate levels you generally want to increase interval speed slightly after that peak to compensate for your aerobic system being fully online. If you want to "steadily increase lactate" you actually need to start slower than normal and ramp up a bit further than keeping lactate stable.
It's actually a bit more complicated than you've implied. At a perfectly steady pace for shortish intervals lactate will generally peak on the first couple intervals. This is because there is a delay in your body ramping up the aerobic system to begin combusting lactate at full capacity. There's a graph in science of winning illustrating this, it may be somewhere on lactate.com as well.
Therefore if you want stable lactate levels you generally want to increase interval speed slightly after that peak to compensate for your aerobic system being fully online. If you want to "steadily increase lactate" you actually need to start slower than normal and ramp up a bit further than keeping lactate stable.
Well, when I do intervals at a steady pace, my hr slowly climbs. My hr is higher in the later intervals than in the early intervals. If my hr in early intervals is sub threshold, and goes to just over threshold later, are you saying that lactate hasn’t increased in the latter part of the session.
A few questions to better understand this scenario...
@_vance Are you asking this for paces faster than or slower than MLSS and for what time duration per repeat?
@lactate_boi Are you talking about the MLSS plots in Olbrecht's book where if you are at or below MLSS, the first 3-5 minute reading will usually be the highest for the 30 minute test, though not necessarily? I suspect it's the repeat workouts though where lactate drops as the session progresses, even though the speed is constant?
This post was edited 10 minutes after it was posted.
Yeah, it's the repeat workouts. I'm talking about his repeat 400 workouts at 3.5 mmol with 30s rest. I looked it up, it's fig 44 (). It's directly comparable to the types of repeats this Norwegian singles system runs.
He goes on to say 'If the coach wants to have this exercise end at 3.5 mmol he will have to ask his swimmer to swim progressively faster through the intervals.' You can see KI do this as well in his treadmill workouts, each rep will bump by .1 kph or similar.
It's actually a bit more complicated than you've implied. At a perfectly steady pace for shortish intervals lactate will generally peak on the first couple intervals. This is because there is a delay in your body ramping up the aerobic system to begin combusting lactate at full capacity. There's a graph in science of winning illustrating this, it may be somewhere on lactate.com as well.
Therefore if you want stable lactate levels you generally want to increase interval speed slightly after that peak to compensate for your aerobic system being fully online. If you want to "steadily increase lactate" you actually need to start slower than normal and ramp up a bit further than keeping lactate stable.
Well, when I do intervals at a steady pace, my hr slowly climbs. My hr is higher in the later intervals than in the early intervals. If my hr in early intervals is sub threshold, and goes to just over threshold later, are you saying that lactate hasn’t increased in the latter part of the session.
I'm not sure I'd try to tie HR and lactate levels that closely. I think there's a lot of advice in this thread about staying further away from "LTHR" than you would expect for that reason.
Two more beats could be +1 mmol or 2 more beats could be 2x mmol (a real example from olbrecht's book). Day to day variation is going to make it difficult to know which one you're getting unless you stay further away from LTHR.
I was referring to paces faster than MLSS with 60s rest. For context, I did a 6x1k workout and my splits were straight up idiotic, but I felt like I was putting the exact same effort the entire time (and no, I unfortunately don’t have a lactate meter so I can’t verify that my lactate was steady): 3:56, 4:13, 4:17, 4:19, 4:18, 4:19
It would also be important to note that I did a 10min jogging warmup before this. What do you all think of warmups? I saw in Bakken’s correspondences with Gjert Ingebrigsten that he didn’t think warmups were necessary, but I’ve seen no downside to doing them.
I did another session around a grass field that I don’t know the exact distance off, and after a 25 minute or so warmup, I ran 6 reps at around 3:50 ± only 3 seconds (60s). Maybe the lower time spread was because of the longer warmup and my aerobic lactate/metabolite clearing capabilities had “ramped up” as another poster put it.
I use an analog watch, so I don’t have accurate mid-rep splits, and I think I’ve gotten pretty good at feeling the necessary intensity if my reps were that close together without looking at the time/pace at all within the reps.
Thanks in advance for the responses; just an uneducated kid here trying to figure out this training.
Interesting, thanks for your help. I’m starting to read through lactate.com, and it’s been helpful so far. Do you know if there are any estimates of how long it generally takes for the aerobic lactate clearing system to get “fully online”?
@lactate_boi Thanks for clarifying and further elaborating! I figured it was the 200m or 400m repeats you were referring to but it’s interesting and noteworthy that even for a MLSS test, below MLSS, you typically see a drop in the reading after the first test point too.
@_vance With regard to your question, I don’t know how you’d target a lactate level without a meter? I’ve played around with taking my lactate curve and plugging the speeds that generate different lactate values into Daniels VO2 formula to see at what percent of VO2Max do those values occur and if they are consistent with others lactate data. There appears just too much variation for my taste to suggest matching paces to lactate levels that way though, in general.
Duration plays a role in lactate too, especially when faster than your MLSS. Olbrecht has a plot (for running) that shows the lactate variation above MLSS when using 3, 5, or 7 minute intervals. While VO2 is stable for all three durations, lactate varies significantly. Conversely, Olbrecht also has a plot (for swimming) of a 6*200m w/ 30 sec recovery where the lactate drops successively with each repeat (from 4.0 mmol to 2.5 mmol), for a workout done at a pace just slightly faster (I believe 102% V4, compared to 99% V4 for the 400m, where V4 is velocity at 4.0 mmol). Point being, you can achieve whatever you want really, it just depends on the execution.
As an additional point, part of the reason the initial lactate is higher and then settles (or even drops) when the pace is constant, is the aerobic-anaerobic energy contribution due to the minimal recovery. On the first repeat, you’re starting from rest, so the initial ~1.5-2 minutes is being supplied “anaerobically” while each successive repeat is being started at a higher level of rest due to the incomplete recovery thereafter, thus requiring a lower percent of “anaerobic” contribution. So, how long your aerobic system takes to “ramp up” is dependent on the workout structure.
This post was edited 9 minutes after it was posted.
Quick question for those familiar with intervals.icu. If we use this 3x sub t approach and are using hr based tss calculation, wouldn’t the fitness curve plateau pretty quick (8-10 weeks?) because over time we are still training at the same hr even though we are running faster. Given that the fitness curve is a 42 day weighted average calculation wouldn’t it plateau? So am I missing something or is there a better way to see progress if this is true
Quick question for those familiar with intervals.icu. If we use this 3x sub t approach and are using hr based tss calculation, wouldn’t the fitness curve plateau pretty quick (8-10 weeks?) because over time we are still training at the same hr even though we are running faster. Given that the fitness curve is a 42 day weighted average calculation wouldn’t it plateau? So am I missing something or is there a better way to see progress if this is true
The bolded part is key.
You are running faster at a similar HR, so in principal it should not plateau. Waiting for Hard2Find to verify this numerically though.