Is there a difference between lactate build up in the muscles and muscle soreness when training? 1. Should you continue through the lactate discomfort or 2. back off during muscle soreness and take a rest?
For me, lactate buildup shows as temporary muscles burning, fatigue is swollen, heavy/failing legs with falling power, and soreness is soreness, and I honestly don’t recall feeling muscle soreness on the bike too much, except maybe some soreness (lactate?) from yesterday’s riding.
eta- You can keep pushing over threshold, like if you’re in the middle of an interval, but you’ll only be able to do it so long. Then you ease up the intensity because it’s the end of the interval or you’ve crested the top of the hill or you want the pain to go away, and your legs will recover so you can do it again if needed. (You didn’t really provide a specific scenario)
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Similar to what @MikeMunson described – we’d call lactate buildup that “burning” feeling you’ll encounter during hard/long intervals.
Muscle soreness, meanwhile, would be more like soreness/stiffness you’d feel more commonly from strength work. That kind of soreness also tends to be present for longer.
It’s very common to feel lactate buildup during your tougher sessions. In those instances, you should do your best to tough it out! Pushing through that discomfort is key to building your fitness.
You can often train through muscle soreness as well, but it’s generally advisable to avoid doing harder interval sessions if you’ve done strength work recently (or have sore legs from another activity). Try to prioritize your hard cycling workouts first, then do strength/other activities that may cause muscle soreness later on. It’s often easier to get through zone 1/2 rides with some soreness than it is to get through an interval workout.
If you feel true pain from either, though, you should definitely stop and rest. By pain, I mean something that feels sharp/unexpected/not normal and would push you to stop riding very quickly.
Hope that makes sense and clears things up – feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions!
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Hey Mike,
Thanks for the feedback. I started TR in October 2024 and chose the “Getting Faster for GRP Ride High Volume” plan. I’m on the specialty phase of the block. So far, the training has gone well. I have gained a 4-watt increase, which I am happy with considering I’m an older rider.
The first week of the training block consisted of:
- Tuesday: Anaerobic 3.5 Wren, 90-minute session
- Wednesday: Endurance 2.6 Manly, 30-minute session
- Thursday: VO2 Max 4.3 Taylor+1, 90-minute session
- Friday: Volunteer 2.1, 30-minute session
During the weekend, I did a hard group ride but got dropped; my legs felt heavy.
Now, the second week of training followed the same pattern. I did the Tuesday Anaerobic session, but on Wednesday’s 30-minute endurance session, I mentally struggled to get through it. I scored the RPE 8; it just felt hard. So I ask, was this because of lactate build-up or just muscle soreness that the session felt hard ?
If it were me, I’d think it was a combination of accumulated fatigue and muscle soreness/stiffness from the previous 2 hard efforts. Are you getting in decent cooldowns at the end of your more intense rides (I almost never do, and have probably suffered because of it for a long time)?
I’ve also, so many times, ridden really hard with my friends on the weekend and took Monday off so I could do intensity on Tuesday, and felt really flat come Tuesday…but finally learned that if I do an easy spin on Monday, I feel fresher on Tuesday (which may not have been needed if I did a proper warmdown on Sunday?).
How is your recovery? Are you getting plenty of protein and carbs, and rest/sleep? Sometimes, the day after a hard ride, when my legs feel flat, and I’m doing an easy spin or zone 2 ride, a gel will wake them up nicely (this works for me more often than not on outdoor rides, too, when the intensity is high and I don’t realize I haven’t been keeping up with carb intake).
I’ve finally gotten to a stage of having a solid base fitness, but before this it would take me forever to feel warmed up sometimes (and I was pushing too much intensity at the time). I’d go on a MTB ride on a particular 8.5 mile/45ish minute route with my friends and my legs would feel flat and stiff until all of a sudden, at mile 8, starting up the series of climbs back up to the trailhead, my legs would feel fantastic. I say this as maybe extending (and/or decreasing the intensity of) those 30 min endurance sessions you’re doing could make the difference.
And lastly, you might need a day off, and/or reduce to 2 days of intensity per week might be your sweet spot. That schedule doesn’t look much like high volume (is it reduced because you’re in specialty phase?), so are you now coming off a build phase that was 15 hour weeks or something? Many of us have run ourselves into the ground trying to do too much intensity every week (I did it a few years ago trying to increase up to 7 hours a week…my friends were suddenly getting faster and I was getting slower and couldn’t keep up anymore). Didn’t seem right that I could be overreaching or overtraining at 6 hours per week, or 4 days of 1.5-2 hr outdoor mtb rides. Took a lot of z2 days to dig out of that hole, but 2 years later most of my friends are trying to keep up with me, and I almost always feel good when it comes time to pedal.
Sorry I’ve run on so much. Hopefully something in here gets you where you want to go. 
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Good stuff, Mike! Thanks for sharing your training experience and what you’ve learned. So far, I like the TR plan. It’s doable; I just need to learn how to tweak it according to how my body is responding to the training stress. My takeaways are as I continue to learn:
- Extending cool down
- Protein intake – I know I am not taking in enough protein for my body weight
- Working on building my base fitness
Thanks again. I hope this conversation helps others reach their goals.