Definiton of Aerobic and Anaerobic, lets get up to date here.

Voice of Ray-san wrote:

Now there's an interesting question. The backbone of this thread belongs to "wellnow", so he deserves a large share of the credit.

I feel somewhat responsible for reviving a thread that was dormant for about 1 year, to resolve a point about the "aerobic" model, which appeared in another thread.

Originally, this thread was about raising awareness regarding what is aerobic and what is anaerobic. A lot of our current ideas stem from original work done, by Dr. Hill, in the 1930's, and by others in subsequent decades. Related to training, we would talk about slow running being aerobic, fast running being anaerobic, lactic acid accumulation limiting exercise, and VO2max being an important factor in determining ultimate performance potential.

Some research in the last 30 years or so, has evolved our knowledge in physiology. Unfortunately, our description of physiology at the track has not evolved at the same pace. The purpose of this thread was to correct some of the common misconceptions. For example:

- To highlight the difference between lactate, and lactic acid, and the role lactate plays in the "aerobic" production of ATP (energy).

- Fast runs are far more aerobic than originally thought, because the resulting lactate can be reused for "aerobic" production of ATP (energy).

There was a break in the middle, where a high school girl wanted some specific advice for improving her mile time. I wonder how she did?

Lately, the discussion is about the idea that the benefits from aerobic developments are limited, and this happens quite early. For example, if you train regularly over a period of 10-20 years, virtually all of the aerobic benefits achieved from VO2max development, lactate threshold improvements, capillary and mitochondrial density improvements, etc., will be realized in the first few years of training. The remaining improvements will come, simply because you just get better at running. You might say "practice makes perfect".

So, if aerobic developments plateau so early, why is there so little discussion about improving power in your stride, or improvements in neuro-muscular coordination?

Now, "jtupper" has joined in, with some interesting additions, and some physiological quizzes, just to spice up the topic.

Hope this does justice.

I did leave a lot out.

Most importantly I forgot that an excellent summary already exists (click on page 17 or maybe this works

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&thread=2289921&id=2886540#2886540

).

The discussion climaxed with an excellent wrap-up of all the pertinent points into an optimal training approach, entitled "Run, Run, Run", to be sung out loud (improves your breathing), to the tune of "Turn, Turn, Turn".

I do this now on my long runs.