Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

H2F - Thanks for putting this together.

docs.google.com

Lactate and Heart Rate in the Heat and Humidity

Lactate Testing This was a 6 week data collection project to observe the relationship between lactate and heart rate, when training in a hot and humid environment. I performed an outdoor lactate step test, before starting the...

Link:docs.google.com/document/d/1dPm4smu8PJ...

I had a different takeaway reading this. In the "Predicting Lactate Based on Heartrate" and "
Predicting Lactate Based on Speed" Graphs it looks like staying below LTHR kept you in a good range for lactate whereas staying below vLT you had a bigger lactate range. So the way I read this, if I don't want to overdo my workout I'm better off focusing on LTHR as opposed to vLT. Maybe heart rate is not a good predictor of lactate but keeping your heart rate below LTHR is a reliable way to make sure you're not pushing your lactate to high.

There was not enough time for a review, got the document one day before you posted it here.

My point was to let you know that 1.6mmol is not realistic for your LT. I provided you some hints, why it could be off. I also provided you a better method as Dmax, which is Mod-Dmax.
I also told you that lactate correlates poorly with HR before your test, but you stated you do your test anyway. Fine.
And I also recommended you do a spiroergometry, already two times. Also ignored.

All that I do in my free time for no money and any gratitude.

Come on dude. The gig is up. No way are you not a troll with that last line. You had a good innings now have been exposed. No way can anyone who's not a troll even write that sentence, let alone believe it.

Just to clarify

I am doing 3 sub-t runs, no X workout.

I am replacing strides with squats basically

The take-home is that the relationship between HR and metabolism in tough environmental conditions becomes decoupled, and what you do with that information depends on what kind of runner you are.

For repeated sub-threshold training, it all comes down to which factors influence recovery the most. The heat stress is showing up in elevated heart rate, but since lactate is not rising, work at the higher heart rate is still sub-threshold. The concern would be whether doing all that work in the heat causes a greater load that is not captured by lactate measurements and you're just going to cook yourself despite hitting lactate targets -- but broadly speaking, the reason lactate measurements are popular is because they're a better proxy for work than HR, and your recovery depends way more on that than your core temperature, hydration status, elevation, etc. If you feel the same as always during a sub-threshold workout in the heat, then look down and see your HR is 5 bpm higher, you probably should not be concerned.

This is just ridiculous at this point haha. However, once more unto the breach…

You seem to be fixated on the actual value and don’t seem to recognize that variability exists? And you suggesting using Mod Dmax instead of Dmax doesn’t change my lactate curve, so choosing that point is as arbitrary a basis as Dmax or LT2. I genuinely don’t understand how this is such an issue for you.

I’ve always been a low producer of lactate, that just appears to be my physiology. An example of a more prominent athlete, is Reed Fischer. He recorded a video of his LT and VO2max test. His lab tested LT2 was 1.3 mmol/l. Alberto Salazar is another example, per Jack Daniels own data. Also, take a look at some of the curves Andy Jones published based on his testing of all the athletes involved in the Breaking 2 project. There’s a lot of variation there. Also, Jones uses LT and LTP to describe LT1 and LT2, so please make sure to email him and tell him he is doing it wrong.

Yes, there’s always the possibility of hydration, glycogen levels, and time of day playing a role. I did my best to control for this by eating and hydrating well (pretty standard for me anyway) and starting at the same time each morning. The whole point of this was to present some ”real-world” data in a hot and humid environment as opposed to on a treadmill, in a lab. For most of us, training doesn’t take place there.

Yes, that is a fair observation that in predicting lactate based on vLT, my observed range is “wider” across the horizontal axis. However (and if I’ve misunderstood your suggestion, do correct me), in the case of predicting lactate based on LTHR if you look up the vertical axis, based on observed lactate values less than or equal to 2.0, you’ll see a lot of points where I am above LTHR yet my observed lactate is of course below 2.0. So, trying to keep the whole session below LTHR would result in running a pace much slower than I could actually run and still stay at a lactate below 2.0.

Does that make sense? I probably could have written more of a detailed analysis/interpretation to address some of those observations, but left it pretty minimal. I’ll try and improve that with future experiments.

H2F - Makes perfect sense. As someone who tends to push too hard in workouts, I'm always looking for a metric to keep me in check. To me it looks like using LTHR as an upper bound is so conservative that you're almost guaranteed to be under LT. Whereas going by vLT is more accurate, but you have a greater chance to be producing more lactate than you expected.

Oh yes. Certainly in that sense you're right. If you wanted to really make sure you're going easy, staying below LTHR (assuming all else equal) would help ensure you do that.

This actually reminds me that part of the reason for doing this, in addition to just the curiosity, was to show how variable lactate can be, in relation to your lactate test paces. That is, there's no perfect method of guaranteed precision. So, I think it can be taken as choose what you enjoy... even if that's manually lapping a Timex on the track haha