Today's Lactate Levels

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 25th, 2004, 11:49 am

After my first fifteen minute piece at exactly 1:45/500m, the lactate level was 2.3 After the second fifteen minute piece at exactly 1:46/500m, the lactate level was 2.1 I still don't feel one hundred percent. Xeno www.gorow.com

[old] Sir Pirate · Post by **[old] Sir Pirate** » October 25th, 2004, 11:53 am

Xeno What testing method do you use? Do you use a drop of blood from the ear lope or a different method? Sir Pirate

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 25th, 2004, 1:35 pm

Hi Sir Pirate I use an amount smaller than a drop of blood from the ear lobe. The device that I use is the lactate pro. To my knowledge it is the most accurate and accessible testing device available on the market. One of the websites that sells the lactate pro is www.hdosport.com. I get a small sales comission from any sale that I generate. If you use 1624XM2004 as a coupon code, you get ten percent of the sale price and I get a ten percent commission. Xeno www.gorow.com

[old] DIESEL · Post by **[old] DIESEL** » October 25th, 2004, 2:07 pm

Hi Xeno, I was over at Amazon.com checking out that Jannsen book on Lactate Training you recommended. Apparently, it's gotten some mixed reviews - with many complaints about it being too theoretical, and with not enough actual nuts and bolts information - i.e. how to design a training program using lactate testing. Your thoughts on that criticism? (Hint, hint for your newsletter or even a book, big guy!! ) Anyway, my next questions to you are: 1. What do those numbers you just posted mean. Give us lactate illerate folks a frame of reference - were your numbers good or bad? Apparently 2.1 is good? 2. Can you give us more insight into how you use those results to tweak your training from day to day or week to week? (Something else you can probably go crazy with in your newsletter!) Obviously, this is really intriguing to me - and I guess I would like more info on this kind of training before I would consider plunking down over 300 bones and drawing my own blood everyday - although I must say I can't really argue with your results if this is how you trained for your Olympic campaigns.

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 25th, 2004, 7:14 pm

The book is good for me, because I have it as a reference now that I am wearing a coaches hat. The nuts and bolts are missing because the man who wrote the book is not a coach. Thanks to Marty Aitken and Harry Mahon and a couple other coaches that I had I was made familiar with how to understand the resluts and how to use them to adjust training intensities. The concept is simple once told by someone who is familiar with the science. Steady state over longer periods of time for a trained endurance athlete are below two mmols of lactate. 2mmol of lactate is roughly the aerobic threshold. Anything beyond 2 mmols should be dealt with more sparingly. Paying the money for the lactate pro will be of a great value IF you are patient and train at the lactate level mentioned above. Xeno www.gorow.com Soon I am going to have a heavy weight double scull at my disposition. For those who are interested I will coach people while rowing with them.

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 27th, 2004, 1:57 pm

I ran the workout at the Iron Oarsman this morning. At seven AM I started a forty minute steady state. The goal was to take one break at half way. This was not a count down piece, which means that the minute that I took to drink did not affect my average. I can tell that I feel slightly stronger and healthier than two days ago. Yesterday I had a little bit of a sinus head ache and did very little training. Over 40 minutes I held a 1:45.5 average with one break at half way. I had the computer set on "just rowing" which means that the stop that I took at half way did not affect my average, unlike in a timed piece. Total meters was 10802; average watts 297.8 and burned 839 cals. Lactate Level at the end of the piece was 2.0mmol. Rule of thumb is that 2.00 is the aerobic threshold. If you push your body beyond 2.0mmol you have a much more limited time to exercise before you run out of energy or are able to keep the lactic acid build up in check. This means that if today I was going to row a marthon I would have held the pace at 1:46 for as long as possible. Seems like point five of a second over 500m distance is very little, BUT over the distance of a marathon it is a lot. If my math in my head is right: 84X500meters. So half a second is roughly 42 seconds over the whole distance. xeno www.gorow.com

[old] Carl Henrik · Post by **[old] Carl Henrik** » October 28th, 2004, 7:03 am

Hi, just a question here. What kind of mmol levels does a 2k produce? And what levels does other sports produce. I guess I am after "wich sport is the toughest" allthough we all know it's rowing allready I was up at 17 after an erg VO2Max test. That was quite hard and I would guess a 2k race is about the same? How does a 400m track sprinter compare to this? I've heard they get really high values. (These guys don't train for dealing dealing with lactate I believe, all they do is train to be so fast that they have crossed the finish line before the lactate completely cripples them, should they train to deal, they would become slower, they train at working with lactate though).

[old] Canoeist · Post by **[old] Canoeist** » October 28th, 2004, 8:44 am

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE (Xeno @ Oct 27 2004, 05:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td class='quote'> This means that if today I was going to row a marthon I would have held the pace at 1:46 for as long as possible. Seems like point five of a second over 500m distance is very little, BUT over the distance of a marathon it is a lot. If my math in my head is right: 84X500meters. So half a second is roughly 42 seconds over the whole distance. xeno www.gorow.com  </td></tr></table> Xeno, To row a marathon under 2 1/2 hours, all you need to do is to hold a 1:46.64 pace. (According to the Concept pace calculator) I believe that you should row at a 1:46.5 pace for the first two hours. Stay as far above your anaerobic threshold as you can and still reach your goal. The time lost during drink breaks will bring the average up to about 1:47. During the last 4K, you can bring that average back under 1:46.6. The key is to have very quick drinks and to keep the flywheel moving during the breaks. My average pace goes up only 0.1 or less during my breaks. Cheers, Paul Flack

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 28th, 2004, 12:34 pm

Sounds good Paul I will take that advise to heart next time I am on it again. Hi Carl The efforts that you mentioned in track and field are anaerobic to the max. 400 meters is so short they hardly go into aerobic energy production. 100 meters is all phosphate energy within ten seconds sprinters are totally depleated. I am not sure what sprinters pump out in lactic acid, it seems too short of an effort for acidosis to occur. I will read up on it. My expertise at the moment is soley on endurance sports like rowing and other sports you can compare to it. Max lactic acid when your entire body is being used could be higher than a sport where only half the body is being used. This again is a guess. XENO www.gorow.com

[old] donm79 · Post by **[old] donm79** » October 28th, 2004, 2:23 pm

I feel silly giving advice to an athlete/coach as experienced/elite as you, but...you may need to start out a bit slower even than 1:46.5. Over a piece as long as a marathon you will experience lactate drift - your steady sub-2.0mmol/L lactate levels will start to drift upwards without any increase in pace. To avoid going acidic too early you might want to start slower and save something for a finishing sprint. Other ways to help keep lactate in check: 1. Adequate consumption of fats to ensure a topped-up supply of intramuscular triglycerides. 2. Adequate carb consumption for topped-up glycogen. 3. Good hydration before and during. 4. Bicarbonate (baking soda) buffering - experiment with this one before a race to avoid gastric upset. 5. Keep temperature in the gym LOW. 6. Wear loose-fitting clothing, and preferably wear no shirt. I'm sure you know this stuff already, but thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 28th, 2004, 3:11 pm

This are all very good points and I will certainly implement a few of them. My ability to push at 1:45-1:46 in the past was around 1.4 mmol of blood lactate. My family had the cold in the last few weeks... Before I give a marathon a try I am going to monitor my steady state values a bit more. One of the ideas is to play around with resistances and stroke rate. As a measure of standart I will push 1:45 at 6.5, then I will change the resistance around. Less resistance higher stroke rate, more resistance lower stroke rate. Xeno www.gorow.com

[old] JosephNovak · Post by **[old] JosephNovak** » October 28th, 2004, 8:53 pm

donm79, Can you elaborate on #4 (Bicarbonate buffering). I don't think I've ever heard of this before. Best, Joe

[old] GeorgeD · Post by **[old] GeorgeD** » October 28th, 2004, 10:24 pm

Hi Xeno, for us backwater people I have heard it said that a 30min max piece at 20spm is a reasonable indicator of AT level. Thru your testing do you have an opinion? ie would this 1:45.5 pace be indicative of what you could do in such a session? Do you experience any change in 'percieved' exertion at this pace and one last thing do you use a HRM and if so is there any indication of AT being reached? - Tks George

[old] Xeno · Post by **[old] Xeno** » October 29th, 2004, 1:37 am

Hi George I have not used the heart rate monitor lately, which is not very professional. 30' at 20 strokes per minute, going flat out is extremely tough. It is a pretty good preparation for a six or a ten k. I would be at max heart rate for most of the piece. I have never taken my lactate after such an effort. It is quite interesting to do these different tests on myself. In the past, 1:45 was a pace that I could hold for a longer time, certainly for ninety minutes without overdoing it. At this point I feel that I would need to build up to it. Xeno www.gorow.com

[old] Mel Harbour · Post by **[old] Mel Harbour** » October 29th, 2004, 7:15 am

Well, the advice recieved from the GB squad physiologists when I was at the coaching conference last year was along the lines of: 30' r20 (max distance). Power output is very close to the level that is expected for anaerobic threshold (4mmol/l). 16k r18 (again, fast as possible). Power output is very close to that for aerobic threshold (2mmol/l). Obviously these are not as precise as taking lactates, but the idea they were trying to bring across was ways of estimating your training intensity without access to lactates. As an aside, I take it you know what your 4mmol/l power output is (or was). Since we know Pinsent can manage 9200m+ for the 30' r20 at sea level, that would suggest a threshold pace of about 1:37.8 per 500m. (Note we are talking 4mmol level, not 2mmol level). It would be interesting to see how you compare. It would also appear that you do fall into the 'diesel' category if we use some other information. The 'Redgrave' 4- in the run up to Sydney would do UT2 rowing at a pace of around 1:51-1:57 on the water (give or take). Now a HM4- tends to go about the same speed as an ergo score (Olympic class time roughly in the 5:50 region), so paces on ergos should be comparable. This would suggest that their UT2 pace was slower than that that you would be doing. Now that may or may not be the case in reality, but it's interesting to compare the differences! Mel

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