Lactate Threshold won’t improve! :(

Are you sure your threshold hasn't improved? Trying wearing a HR monitor or using a lactate meter.

The best way to improve threshold is running fartleks in which your "on" portions are just over threshold and your "off" segments are just under it. So if your threshold is 6:00, go 5:50 and 6:20. Try starting with 10x1on/1off and building up to 5x5on/2off or something similar. I've had great results doing this, and Canova is a big proponent of this style of fartlek.

You can’t feel your LT. 0/10

Actually, you can feel LT; on the RPE scale 6-20, dial into 10-12.

The concept is hardly sacrosanct if you know any of the science,but if you believe LT has merit, and and want to incorporate it, then RPE 10-12 certainly does the trick.

See Art Weltman's work from the late 80s and early 90s.

Um. You can perceive it, but you can't feel it.

Seppo Kaitenenn wrote:

The best way to improve threshold is running fartleks in which your "on" portions are just over threshold and your "off" segments are just under it. So if your threshold is 6:00, go 5:50 and 6:20. Try starting with 10x1on/1off

1 what on/off? One minute? One Mile?

whynoimprovement wrote:

My race times have been improving over the years, but my lactate threshold FEELS like it os just staying the same!

If your race times are improving, you're doing fine. No one wins a gold medal for having the best lactate threshold.

my 2c wrote:

whynoimprovement wrote:

My race times have been improving over the years, but my lactate threshold FEELS like it os just staying the same!

If your race times are improving, you're doing fine. No one wins a gold medal for having the best lactate threshold.

This.^ Race times are what is important. Make sure after each new PR, you increase the speed of your intervals a tad, and set your sights higher. This should be your new training paces. If you want to keep running Tempos, that pace should increase too. Jack Daniels VDOT calculator can help you there. It never gets easier once you are close to your best. ;)

whynoimprovement wrote:

My race times have been improving over the years, but my lactate threshold FEELS like it os just staying the same! No matter what I do I always get that same feel of increasing lactate / heavy legs right around the same pace, and this has been over the past few years!

Do plain old 30 minute tempos just not cut it?

I remember dozens of World Championship and Olympic also-rans overjoyed that, while their race times got worse over the years, their lactate threshold dramatically improved. Also etched in my memory are all the champions in tears after winning their gold medals because, alas, their lactate thresholds had either stayed the same or gotten slower. So I feel your pain.

(sarcasm alert)

whynoimprovement wrote:

My race times have been improving over the years, but my lactate threshold FEELS like it os just staying the same! No matter what I do I always get that same feel of increasing lactate / heavy legs right around the same pace, and this has been over the past few years!

Do plain old 30 minute tempos just not cut it?

Would you rather your LT improve while your race times get worse?

Alan

whynoimprovement wrote:

My race times have been improving over the years, but my lactate threshold FEELS like it os just staying the same! No matter what I do I always get that same feel of increasing lactate / heavy legs right around the same pace, and this has been over the past few years!

Do plain old 30 minute tempos just not cut it?

So, you want to train just below your threshold, but you are plateaued, based on your "heavy leg" sensation? That sounds like you are sensing muscle lactate, not blood lactate. So, your muscles need more MCT1, to actively push the lactate and H+ out of your muscles. Maybe you've been training too hard, causing your FOX fibers to shift away from pyruvate/lactate oxidation, and more towards mere glycolysis and lactate. In any case, you need to find a way to increase the cotransporter MCT1 content.

Jesus christ guys, I realize race times are more important than my LT. Did I ever say anything to the contrary?

I’m simply concerned about how in the long-term things will CONTINUE to progress if my LT isn’t progressing. Thank you for whoever suggested the alternating tempo type workout. I think I’ll try that.

I feel like 30 minute tempos weren't great for my LT development. I always prefered LT intervals a bit faster with little rest. Might just be me but you should try it.

You do realise that the 6-20 RPE scale is meant to correlate with HR.

LT would be closer to 16/17 on effort between 165-170, even then I still wouldn't go near it with a barge pole in terms of accuracy.

I'd also steer away references from nearly 40 years ago its very outdated.

I found that using these two types of sessions helped me with LT development or time spent at LT.

1) Short repeats between 400-800 off a very short recovery (30-45s or 100 jog) @ 102% LT.

- 8000m of work building up to 10000m then eventually 12000m.

i.e 20 x 400 off 30s

15 x 600 off 45s

2) Long repeats off a moderate float recovery building the interval volume at LT - aim to maintain pace and if anything only improve the speed of the recovery for the first few rotations.

6 x 1000 // 1000 float @ LT off 1000 moderate float (float 20s per km slower)

4 x 2000 // 1000

3 x 3000 // 1000

1. Race times are the proof of the pudding

2. If you race much faster than LT there is much more to it than just LT. When you do race specific workouts, you train the max lactate steady state of that pace. Canova have demonstrated with practical examples that at the peak performance of several of his runners, they can maintain a very high and steady lactate level at race pace. It basically is kept steady and NOT going into the roof until the race is over. This is another "threshold" that may be more important than LT. Let us say you race at 3k this is at VO2 max training which is of course much faster than LT. So for example doing max VO2 intervall work, this is also considered as some form of LT training. Training effects are complex and one cannot disect it into very simple rules and think this is actually the way the body works.

3. I think LT work can and should be done at a variety of forms, both steady and intervalls, and intervalls as short, medium, long, alternations. Short ones can give high speed but still not breaking the LT. LT is not really the 1 hour pace, but the lactate level breaking point, which is depending on what you do in the moment.

So I would not worry too much, but use the opportunity to make changes to how you train the LT.

one what wrote:

Seppo Kaitenenn wrote:

The best way to improve threshold is running fartleks in which your "on" portions are just over threshold and your "off" segments are just under it. So if your threshold is 6:00, go 5:50 and 6:20. Try starting with 10x1on/1off

1 what on/off? One minute? One Mile?

Not sure if you're trolling or not but it's 1 minute on/1 minute off.

Actually.... no wrote:

I found that using these two types of sessions helped me with LT development or time spent at LT.

1) Short repeats between 400-800 off a very short recovery (30-45s or 100 jog) @ 102% LT.

- 8000m of work building up to 10000m then eventually 12000m.

i.e 20 x 400 off 30s

15 x 600 off 45s

2) Long repeats off a moderate float recovery building the interval volume at LT - aim to maintain pace and if anything only improve the speed of the recovery for the first few rotations.

6 x 1000 // 1000 float @ LT off 1000 moderate float (float 20s per km slower)

4 x 2000 // 1000

3 x 3000 // 1000

Great post.

I would also advise longer efforts at just under threshold. We do 40 to 55 minute "sub-Ts" (inspired by Mike Smith) at basically the pace Daniels recommends for longer tempos, or something we think we could hold for two hours. Two things about this, though: Make sure you don't turn this into a race, and you have to build up to this volume of work. I wouldn't do 8-10 miles of quality unless you're running at least 70 mpw.

My training in the base phase has basically evolved into mileage from 60-80% max HR (incl. long runs), strides/sprints and two workouts both aimed at improving LT, but neither actually at LT.

I'll do one sub-T per week (building the distance each week) and the other workout alternates between the over/under fartlek I suggested, and a workout like actually no suggested. I usually start with 400s at 5k-10k pace and build up to 1ks over the course of a month or two. The 1ks are at more like 10k pace. The key is to to keep the recovery short, and even better is to jog it, or run steady in between reps.

As the training cycle progresses I'll move into intervals at LT, but I don't run a lot of straight tempos anymore. I don't do well on them (partly since I train at altitude), and I feel they are too hard (likely to turn into a race effort) and hurt my confidence.

Finally, I'd say if your race times are improving, your threshold is probably improving too. It's too closely correlated with race times for it to stagnate while you're able to run faster times. Unless you have only PRed in the mile and down.

whynoimprovement wrote:

Jesus christ guys, I realize race times are more important than my LT. Did I ever say anything to the contrary?

I’m simply concerned about how in the long-term things will CONTINUE to progress if my LT isn’t progressing. Thank you for whoever suggested the alternating tempo type workout. I think I’ll try that.

I'm just saying you are worried about things that don't be matter. How does your training affect your racing. All that matters. Not LT. Not Vo2max. Time and Place are what matters. Focus your training on those two things and the other things that don't matter will fall into place.

Whatever you are doing is working since you are getting father in races.........

Alan

Most serious adult athletes will not experience any improvement in VO2max (absent weight loss or a move to altitude). If they improve at the 3k distance (roughly vVO2max), it's because of increased economy (which increases velocity at the same oxygen consumption level) or anaerobic tolerance.

LT, on the other hand, can continue to improve for years and get closer to your VO2max. That said, LT improvement will also level off in the vicinity of 90% of vVO2max, and it only takes a few years to get there as well, depending on how hard you train. To get LT faster after that, you would need to improve economy (the only way to increase vV02 since VO2 is probably fixed). That can potentially be done with drills, plyos, hills, etc. Depending on your current ground contact time, there may not be a lot of room for improvement there. It's also the natural result of lots of running at a variety of faster paces, which you're probably already doing.

Keep in mind that when I say that these values level off, I'm talking about long term development. Both will degrade quickly with a layoff from running, but you can get back to your previous level pretty quickly with training.

Now, as others have pointed out, there's nothing magical about LT. Scientists and coaches get worked up about it: (1) because it correlates with performance better than VO2max, (2) because it responds to training over a longer period, and (3) (here's the big one) because it can be measured in a lab. (Though even most lab step tests are really just good guesses.) The thing is, all three criteria are also met by longer distance races (10k to half marathon). They correlate strongly with performance at other distance, they're more trainable than shorter distances, and it can be measured precisely with a hard race. Scientists will quibble that the actual race involves psychological factors that are absent in lab testing of LT, but I think the margin of error for lab testing is significant enough that we can call that a wash.

So what do we do with our longer distance race pace? We compare it to our 3k race pace to determine the Riegel Coefficient. Basically, there's a fairly predictable rate of decay in performance as distance increases. An 8% slowdown in speed as distance doubles is a standard rule of thumb. But well trained athletes can get down to 5% or POSSIBLY a little lower if they have an extraordinarily high percentage of slow twitch fibers. So if your Riegel coefficient is higher than 6, then you definitely have room to bring your longer distance PRs up to the ceiling that's set by your 3k PR. You can calculate your personal Riegel Coefficient using this calculator:

https://www.runningahead.com/tools/calculators/race

. Plug in two races. Ideally the short one would be 3k, but 5k is okay. Plug in different distances for the second one and see how the coefficient changes. It's not unusual for the coefficient to be pretty low at 10k but to drop off at 10 miles to the marathon. It's good news if it drops off because those are races where you probably have untapped potential.

So turning to your particular situation:

1) If you're improving at distances between 5k and the half marathon, your LT is almost certainly improving.

2) It's important to be realistic about the improvement that you're going to see. An experienced runner is not going to see massive improvements in LT. Five seconds per mile would be a very big improvement, and it's not necessarily something you're going to "feel" on a normal run.

3) If your Riegel Coefficient for your 3k (or two mile) PR and a race around one hour is over 6%, then you have room for improvement still.

IF the third situation applies, then you need longer workouts at paces ranging from 10k to marathon. There's nothing wrong with straight LT runs, but that shouldn't be all you do, or even your main training tool. When I say long, I mean stuff like 9 x mile at 10k pace or long runs alternating LT miles with just slower than marathon pace. There have also been some good suggested workouts on this thread. In layman's terms, you need workouts that test your legs rather than your lungs.