Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

It is well known that lactate correlates poorly with HR. Lactate is also sensitive to nutrition (e.g. carbo loading), hydration, time of day ...

Second, there are tons of methods to 'find' LT2, up to now the lactate guys could not agree on any specific method!

1.6mmol for your LT2 seems to be off. The modified Dmax method is better as Dmax and would give around 2mmol for your LT2, which fits much better, but is still on the low side. So either you were not carbo loaded, not fresh at this time, hydration status(?) or you are a severe slow twitcher and can shake hands with sirpoc :)

Do you require special assistance? Where does H2F mention LT2 as 1.6 mmol? No wonder you talk nonsense on forum often with paper you read. You lack comprehension skill. You should just burn your username and ask brojos if you can start again to avoid more clown like performance from you. You really are bottom of class.

Not to everyone. It does not hurt to test and establish empirical evidence for anyone interested.

Is it really that important to get the lactate levels that exact if you can just use effort and heart rate as a proxy for what you are trying to train?

From what I've observed, and from what Hard2Find brilliantly demonstrated, heart rate is not a good proxy for sub threshold efforts in variable and/or non optimal conitions.

RPE and pace would be a lot better if you don't have access to lactate testing.

Thank you to yourself, as well. You along with hard2find have provided excellent real world data over the course of the thread.

As there seems to be a few of the main protagonists in one place , I noticed on the Strava group, sirpoc , hard2find and a few others have been mentioning respiration rate, as per se a marker maybe as the border for LT1 or more so keeping easy days below this. Does anyone have anything to share or add to the thread? Since reading a few things, I have certainly noticed a pattern or trend in my own testing to safely say a respiration rate of around 30 absolutely corresponds to my lactate tested LT1 marker. Interestingly, HR doesn't seem to massively play a part here.

Sorry, I know it's kind of a diversion but something I am genuinely interested in as we are talking physiological markers and proxy's, it seems like a good one in appears?

Guys, let me let u into a secret.I have been long time coach now by a coach named JS,a Swedish maestro.

Myself I am from Asia but he offers service throughout globe.His methods are similar to those supported by rank amateurs in this thread but with benefit of not having to run every day.Some of his clients refer to magic but of course magic isnt real just lots of hard work.I would suggest look him up,it would be beneficial and i don't need to worry about things like mundane discussion in thread or erroneous study like hard2find writes.i don't think he knows what LT is of course😏

Very rare anyone get better using this method but with my coach many master runnings has improved greatly.i hope someone finds this post useful to give a different perspective.

The point of double-t is to maximize the time spent at threshold relative to total workload. If your total running time will be less due to schedule you just pare down and experiment with trying to find how best to get in the volume at threshold. I work full time, am working on my doctorate, doing research, and have a young family (5 and 3 year old), plus my wife has a professional job so I don’t just foist the kids on her, and we don’t have family locally so we don’t really have help. I run 35 miles per week, all singles, and 3 of the 6 days per week that I run are days of 1 mile warmup and 5 miles of threshold. Week in, week out. Not pretty, but it works, and my fitness has been improving. It’s not ideal but when running is your 7th or 8th priority in life you do what you can.

Here we go again indeed…

To your first point, I think that is nuanced. There is a correlation, it just varies in strength and is subject to circumstance. For instance, on a treadmill, indoors, in an optimal temperature and humidity, there will be less variability than in a hot and humid environment where even running at an easy pace for long enough can drive your heart rate to LTHR (depending on your definition). So, in my experience, context matters.

In fact, I’m planning to repeat this experiment on a treadmill indoors and again outdoors when the weather improves. If I am wrong (meaning if the variance is not reduced), I will personally buy you a pair of super shoes for your sub 20 minute 5k attempt! You’ll need them : )

Furthermore, to address controlling for one of your nutritional concerns (hydration), I’ve invented a portable, though not potable, device called The Six Shooter. It’s a digital hydration analysis station you can take to the track and set on the infield at the finish line for a 6 x 1600m session. At the end of each repeat, just center yourself over it and urinate into one of the six 8 oz cylinders. Voila, now hydration status can be accurately accounted for! Disclaimer, company will not be held liable for indecent public exposure.

As for defining LT. I’ll just reiterate that I chose to use Dmax, which is not LT1, nor LT2. It’s just a method that results in a point on the lactate curve, approximating LT, as the result of a mathematically defined method. You literally made the point, but then somehow missed the point, that there is not a well defined nor agreed upon “threshold” value to use. So, I was simply using the Dmax value to define a basis for vLT and LTHR. I could have chosen modified Dmax, LT1, LT2, 2.0 mmol/l, 4.0 mmol/l, OBLA 1 to infinity... With in reason, it’s all arbitrary.

Lastly, yes, I am very much a “slow twitch dominant” runner. Which probably explains why it's so easy for me to shuttle your waste when you exceed your threshold.

To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention to RR until sirpoc shared his observation that it was correlating better than HR.

In my case, I've been getting erratic readings despite using Garmin's HRM Pro Plus strap, where my RR is decreasing during a progressive warm up, during which my HR is also noticeably increasing with pace. The RR goes down to resting levels so something is off.

Weirdly enough, RR seems fine when I do rides on the trainer.

I recently backed a project on kickstarter (Neumafit PACER), which supposedly approximates VO2 by utilizing RR sensors. Fingers crossed that I actually end up with a unit sometime soon.

You wrote in your document, i quote:
In order to calculate lactate threshold (LT), I used the Dmax method (though a simple visual inspection would work fine). This identified a lactate value of 1.6 mmol/l as my LT.

You should be very happy that someone on this board informs you about such a nonsense, only a handful of readers here can do so.

You mention that all methods to define LT2 are arbitrary, but you still use LTHR all the way in your document to make claims and conclusions :)

I have the feeling, and i agree with user coached2success, you do not know what you are doing.

Reporting back:

2 weeks in doing 3 LT per week. I feel great so far and garmin indicates improvment.

I am using Garmin training load function.

Looking at Ingebritson hobby strava I see he does weights on the easy days.

Are you guys also doing squats etc on the E days ? I assume this is how to get away with not doing strides and other speed stuff ?

If you look at what sirpoc does, in my opinion stick to that. He doesn't do anything gym work, if I'm correct? Maybe I've got that totally wrong. But I've gotten the impression and someone can correct me, he runs, gets on with his day and that is literally it?

Kristoffer in my opinion is stuck in a vicious cycle. He scared of getting injured, does more weights to think he getting stronger , gets injured again, does gym work and repeats. Also, having read roughly translated some of the stuff he does, he did weights to compliment the hill strength work. Again, I think this is a mistake. He's a hobby joggers, just like sirpoc. Older, riskier. Why push the limits? Also, sirpoc is now significantly faster than Krisstoffer, without changing anything. I think that shows don't get greedy, just take it to the limit but with minimising risk.

Maybe I could see an argument if you have always lifted etc. but to introduce that as well on top of hills and on top of sub t where you are on the rivet constantly, just seems like a big big error and recipe for disaster.

Yes, correct, I wrote that. It feels like you’re playing a game of semantics here. Are LT1, LT2, Dmax, Mod Dmax, OBLA 2, 3, 4, LT-Ratio not all different methods one could use to “identify” a threshold point? Could I have called it vDmax instead of vLT or DmaxHR instead of LTHR? Sure. Does it matter, given that I took the time to say what I was doing and explain how I was using the term LT, vLT, and LTHR? To me, no, researchers do it all the time. I really don’t know what your problem is?

Whatever basis I chose, the data is still the same with the same structure to it. It’ll just be on a different scale. I could have stuck with using the raw speed and heart rate as well, but thought it would be more relatable in percentage terms.

And again, you keep using LT2 when I never mentioned that. I chose to use LT generically, similar to how the researchers in the universal running equation paper you linked chose to define LT as the baseline lactate value plus a constant term (I believe 1.5 mmol/l). Some researchers even use the term LT to represent LT1 and LTP to represent LT2. Maybe you can bother them instead.

I’m too laid back to get annoyed, but given that I actually emailed this to you several days ago and then you decide to come on here and pull one of your classic pop-up masterclasses in how you think you’re solving a problem when you’re not, is just mind blowing to me!

I hope you aren't out off posting here by lexel. He has contributed zero to this thread. In fact he's net zero in contributions and always confuses himself. He legitimately is a stupid person who actually HAS NO IDEA what he is talking about. He cannot actually interpret properly what has been written in the papers he reads, which is why in your absolute fantastic small scale research, he has yet again chosen to read and interpret what he thinks has been written, rather than what you actually wrote.

He's an absolute joke at this point and I really hope there isn't anyone who takes lexel seriously as he will send you likely down a path you absolutely do not need to go down. 17 different time trials etc just to realise you need to run repeats at around a % of your 5k pace that you could have just done on day 1.

It's possible he's a troll. But I think he's too stupid to be a troll. He's good at remembering the information he thinks is correct and will then repeat the same thing over and over like a trained seal. I don't think he's a troll, as troll is sometimes funny and he has the humour and personality of a block of cheese.

Don't worry I dont get injured Lifting.

I don't have enought weights at home.

I did decline squats with 2 x20kg kettelbells and bw pistol squats today and some core.

This is terrible advice. Strength work is absolutely essential. KI is one of the top hobby joggers around just look at his times? He also has one of the best coaches in the world, I think that's worth noting. As an older athlete he is the perfect example of how to train and just look at his success. I defy anyone to find someone as a better example. Injury is part of the game. It cannot never be eliminated.

I'm not here to knock KI, he's great I'm just point out I think he's probably tipped the balance from smart training, to more towards the risk. You also know that sirpoc would pretty much lap him in a 10k? So just because of his name or who he has access to coaching from. Doesn't necessarily mean much when you are about to be lapped.