Some more information about kenyan athletes

Renato Canova wrote:

I'm very happy that the discussion is finally on the rail of methodology. I want to explain better what I wrote. For normal phisiology, regarding normal people, the conventional thresholds are about 2 mmol (aerobic) and 4 mmol (anaerobic). This is true for athletes that have a very high development in aerobic endurance at low level (for example, amateur athletes), or for marathon runner at the top of their shape, specific for marathon.

When a marathon runner is preparing his marathon, in a period about 3 months before the race, the difference between the speed of 2 mmol (AT) and 4 mmol (AnT) is about 10% (for example, 3'20" per km and 3' per km, or, for you, 5'20" - 4'48" per mile). When you go on with SPECIFIC WORKOUTS OF MARATHON SPEED ENDURANCE, normally you reduce this gap, arriving about a difference of 5% in the period of the race (for example, 3'09" - 3' per km). This difference in speed is a good mark for testing the real preparation for a marathon. So, you must not improve your speed, as your best performance in HM can be reached about 45-30 days before your marathon, but after you must maintain your speed, lasting longer. REMEMBER THAT MARATHON IS A SPECIALISM OF EXTENSION.

For searching and testing this situation, we use a test called FARAGGIANA-GIGLIOTTI (Faraggiana was the doctor of Italian Federation following Gelindo Bordin from '86 to '92 and Gigliotti his coach, now coach of Baldini) consisting in 6 x 2000m at even pace, using an acustic rabbit, taking blood for controlling lactate, run with a very short intervall (may be 40", time necessary for taking blood), with a small improvement in speed every time. For example, Bordin used running in 6'15" - 6'10" - 6'05" - 6' - 5'55" and 5'50". Among this series of times, of sure there is the marathon pace. If the preparation is going in a correct direction, what we can see is that the level of lactate, in different periods, decreases around the speed good for marathon. When the level is about 2 mmol, if the difference between 2 and 4 mmol is 5% in speed, the athlete is prepared for running the full race at the pace of 2 mmol.

With Kenyan athletes (but not only, because we began this tests with Antibo (27'16") and Panetta (27'24" and 8'08" on steeple) I tried something different. For a runner of 26'30" like Kemboi this year, for instead, supposing a value of 26'40" two weeks before Brussels, I did a test running 5 times 2000m in 5'20" (going down from St. Moritz to Sondrio, because in altitude the level of lactate is not the same) with recovery of 1'30", and i had these values :

6,6 mmol (1st) - 8,3 (2nd) - 8,7 (3rd) - 9,2 (4rd) - 11,6 (5th). In this values, you can find a special type of steady-state about 8-9 mmol, lasting from 2nd to 8th km, that we call MAX LASS, depending on different situations, among which the permeability of the membranes it seems to be the most important. So, the behavior of lactate at the speed of the race in a top runner is very different from that of a normal runner, but also from the trend of the lactate in the same athlete, while not specifically trained.

I want to continue later.