Lactate Testing - Data and Results

After my first lactate test in December, I had no idea what to do with the information. I had just heard somewhere that an LT test was a good thing to do, and the guy doing my bike fit offered the service, so I did it. It seemed kind of random at the time and didn’t really inform my training. In retrospect, though, I’m really glad I did it because it provides such an excellent “Before” snapshot of my poor metabolic health at the time.

After a couple weeks on the bike in December, I found myself wanting to increase my riding time from one week to the next. My goals were mainly to increase hours per week without overtraining/getting injured. I just did random workouts on TR or noodled around on Zwift without worrying about power. Then around February, I started listening to a bunch of podcasts with Seiler. What he said made so much sense to me and seemed like a really safe way to increase training volume. I did almost all easy rides, with wattage gradually climbing from the 120s or 130s in the beginning to the 190s or low 200s today. Heart rate in the range of 110 to 130 over the course a 2 or 3hr ride, vs 183 HRmax. I did 4x8 intervals about once a week but other than that, just easy riding until July. I’ve been doing about 12 hrs a week on the indoor bike these past two months, and just completed my first 3-week VO2 block, so I will be interested to see how my VO2 has changed. One thing these trips to the lab show me is how easy it is to mess up a test.

Speaking of thresholds, I recently bought a Tymewear shirt (I learned about it from Seiler’s Twitter), which supposedly will tell your VT1 and VT2 via a ramp test. I haven’t tried it yet so can’t speak to its effectiveness, but it’s one of the things I’m going to experiment with soon.

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Re the lab test, I just wish they would extend the lactate component of the test to 2mmol.

Thanks for the feedback on step duration. 10min does indeed seem pretty long and the only reason I thought of it is that’s what ISM uses. But with super-long steps like that, it’s hard to go from low wattage to exhaustion unless you take large steps. That’s why I was thinking about 30w. But it probably makes more sense to reduce the duration and make the steps smaller.

Re couch-to-trained, one other thing I did was get a DXA scan at the beginning of February and another one in July. Before the February scan I had been riding the bike for about five weeks, but not for long durations, so I was probably still pretty close to couch potato body composition. From Feb to to July, I lost about 3lb body weight, consisting of a loss of 7.4lb of fat, while gaining 4.9 lb of muscle, per the DXA scans. Body fat fell from 19.4% to 15.9%. Exercise is a miracle drug :smiley:

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That would be really interesting if you could come back to us on the results of that. By the way, I think what you have done is fantastic. You ought to tweet Seiler on it as your improvement is stellar using his methodology.

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Congrats on excellent progress and documenting the journey. Very nice work indeed!

10 min steps and ISM

My recollection of his comments from various podcasts is definitely toward longer times at each test wattage. With good reason. But he seems to vary the times from 5-10 min. It would likely depend on what they are trying to learn in a specific test session and the type of athlete being tested. For example, you might keep a world tour rider on the erg for longer periods because they can handle it. An amateur hobby type rider you might shorten the time per step so the rider is better able to complete the riding.

But mostly, the test protocol depends what you are trying to learn.

Test Protocols for Lactate

My experience, most university labs, and people like the bike fitter who offer lactate testing, tend to run protocols with too large a wattage increase per step and not enough time spent per step.

I’ve also found most folks who offer testing are happy to modify the protocols when they have an informed athlete / customer. Again, in my experience, most folks getting a lactate test never use the data. It’s more of a fun thing to do and sometimes an ego stroke for better riders.

Personalizing your testing

With some data in hand, and knowing what you want to learn from each test to further guide training or measure progression, you can modify your protocols to use longer times per step and smaller steps around the expected points of interest to get better data.

For example, if I expect my LT1 to be 190w with an FTP of 225w and I want to zero in on LT1, can run a protocol with 6-8 min step times and wattage increments of: 125, 150, 170, 180, 190, 200, 210, 225 (see note), 250 (see note). That’s about an hour of riding which is a good test time for an average amateur. A rider might not complete the suprathershold step but that’s fine. Do as long as you can then take the measurement.

During my tests I always record HR and RPE for each wattage step. When I test others have found the RPE record to be very useful. Perception of pain and effort is important to performance. If a rider has a specific pain or RPE that is dissociated from the power curve and the physiology it gives another area upon which improvements can be made (the mental aspect of performance is important too so give yourself some data is the take home message here).

(note) I don’t spend time trying to refine LT2 or 4 mMol. If I really want to know my MLSS then I’ll test specifically for that. But if I’m running a step test to see LT1, I’ll still run up the watts to MLSS (FTP) and some significant step past MLSS (20-30w). Just to see what happens and to flesh out the curve.

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Quick update,

A month ago, i began using lactate to control intensity.
My LT1 rides have always been 3x20 @ 1.3-1.8mmol.
I use Dr Ferrari’s AT4 as my LT2, therefore 2.3-3.0mmol. You can read the thread about his training methods. I will add a screenshot of this. Marius Bakken also seems to think this.


.

My lt2 rides have been 6x6 minutes Norwegian style.

In 4 weeks, my power at lt1 has gone from 190W to 210W.
My Power at “LT2” has gone from 215W to 250W

I do not have my lactate curve. I have not tested above 3.5 mmol. I have a sprinter power curve. For example, 800Watts for 30 seconds is not an all out effort for me.

I will post an update in a few weeks,

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Here is some data from my lactate test.
Warmup was 30 minutes at 130W
Each step was 5 minutes.
First step: 156W
Final step completed : 281W
Test ended 2 minutes into the step at 305W. My breathing was controlled, but my legs could not move the pedals—extreme muscle endurance issue.

Estimated aerobic threshold: 210-230W
Estimated LT2??? : 260W

I am 6’, 183lbs, 29 years old, bodybuilder build. Fast-twitch dominant athlete. Fast 40-yard dash(3 years ago), 100m sprint(years ago), high jump(current), explosive powerlifter(current), 455lbs deadlift(current) I hope you get the image.

A month ago, i “tested” on the road. The hard effort was 800W for 30 seconds and ran out of road.

I bought a lactate meter because I was curious. I do not race on the road. I don’t care much for FTP. My goal is to build a good aerobic base to be ready to try racing on the track this winter. Maybe the Kilo?

EDIT: I have not done any high-intensity sprint training on the bike. In fact, I haven’t done any sprints since 2019.

I am open to any tips and recommendations to improve this.


Nice result. Impressive 30s power and Dead Lift number as well.

I love riding the velodrome, but am too small and weak to be any good at it. Kilo, pursuit, miss and out are all fun.

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Todays results :slight_smile: The line is moving to the right, so thats good!

I haven’t done any LT2 training at all since last time, only endurance riding and a few LT1 interval days, and a few V02 Max days. And then I did 3 weeks on Mallorca (20 hours a week).

Looking forward to doing more LT2 focus this winter!

Estimated LT1?
Estimated LT2?

Did my best 20min power two weeks ago - 343w @ 76kg

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Big jump at 225W,but it stabilizes.

My guess is lt1 at 225W, and you have a great ability to ride with higher lactate. LT2 maybe around 285W.

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Are you getting the same results indoor on a trainer and outside on the road or you see smaller power at same lactate level indoor?

Recently listened to a podcast where Johnathan Vaughters makes a similar statement reflecting on the training block of one his riders in preparation for a 1 day race.

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Great thread. I recently bought a lactate meter and I have followed the advice above and performed a ramped lactate test with 10 minute efforts and 10W increments. The small increments were mostly because I am a pretty new cyclist and did not have any idea of what my LT1 would be.

Pretty strange curve, but I suspect that the high initial values are partly because it was quite soon after waking and the morning cortisol raised the base line. I have measured my resting lactate to 1.6 previously. Also I only had a few minutes of warmup since I gathered that the first levels would be enough warmup.
Depending on what method to use to estimate LT1, I have the following results
Based on 1.0 mmol/l above baseline (assuming baseline is the lowest measurement 1.3) => 190-195 W
Based on > 2.0 mmol/l => 190 W
Based on “Slight rise above baseline” => 170 W (?)
Talk test, when repeating the sentence “1,2,3,4…15” between breaths becomes a bit strained => 190W
When HR is 80% of Max (186) => 192 W
When HR is 90% of LTHR (170) => 195 W
75% of FTP (263 from TR ramp test) => 197 W

Before this I also made a ramp test, which resulted in an estimated FTP of 263 W (74 kg), but that is probably at least 10-20 W too high. From previous sports (downhill skiing, martial arts, track and field sprint events) I am quite glycolytic, ending the ramp test with 22 mmol/l.

I also measured after SS intervals @ 230 W (88% of 263) and then I had 6.0 mmol/l. That did not feel too hard but if I go higher I suspect that I will accumulate a lot of lactate.

Apart from the “Slight rise above baseline” and taking into account that my FTP is probably overestimated by a ramp test the estimated LT1 seems to be pretty consistent around 190W.

My training now will be focused on training my type 2 fibers to be more aerobic.
-Upper Z2/LT1 training, targeting 180-190 W and perhaps lower if the HR goes above 80%
-SS intervals around 88% of FTP. If I go with 263 that would be about 230 W but I may go lower due to the over-estimation. Perhaps 230 is more of a threshold effort for me, but I’m not sure how hard it should feel. I will sometimes check the lactate after the last interval to see that it is reasonable
-some tempo
-group MTB rides which unfortunately will be difficult to cap the power on, but I will try to linger in the back of the group

Eventually I will do a more complete power profile, but I can pretty much guess that it is sloping downwards quite a lot.
Thoughts or advice?

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Your LT1 ~= 190W. :+1:

:+1:

:+1:

I wouldn’t worry about a cap if it’s ~ 1 / week or less frequent. Go out and rip it up. Have fun. Endurance + tempo riding can get monotonous. Mix it up. Just try not to mix it up too much and make yourself tired.

Or just tempo. You are mixing metaphors approaches/philosophies here but if it keeps you engaged and you enjoy these, then go for it. If you lower the intensity to tempo you can get more minutes / time in zone. And that’s the name of game. Nothing magical about 88% FTP. 45mins at tempo is better than 15min at sweetspot. Why? 45 > 15, especially if done over weeks and weeks.

That is pretty high already, even if you don’t go harder. One idea is to do the MTB ride or a session of SS intervals. Sure, they aren’t really the same thing but both of them are “high lactate” type riding.

At the risk of throwing the thread in an unnecessarily philosophical direction, ask yourself why you want lower lactate (both during a ride and as an overall trend during an assessment)? Ultimately, it is about riding that allows you to do more riding, and then some more. More is more.

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I find 1 mmol above baseline far too high for LT1. 0.3 mmol is a more commen value.

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Thanks a lot. Great advice. In particular I like the idea about replacing SS with tempo. At the moment I have a hard time recovering if I go above ~50 CTL. (The group rides are around 200 TSS for me so that doesn’t leave a lot …)

Edit: No group rides in the winter where I live so the “problem” will resort itself

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Interesting. So is my baseline 1.3 which is the lowest reading? That would give LT1 around 170W?

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As you seem to be quite aerobically underdeveloped at this moment (as evidenced by high resting and test La values), I would not even worry about targeting intensities around LT1, but focus on a lot of easy volume. High La levels indicate that you do not have good capacity to use lactate which points to low density of mitochondria and the main way to improve it is volume. If you have time and can put in time at 150w and less, consider doing it.

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Thanks for adding to the thread Matt.

Agree with the posts above suggesting time dedicated to further development of your aerobic engine will pay off. Rough estimate, time spent 160w +/- 10w is a decent range. 2, 3, 4 hour rides if you can do it. It’s not the most exciting type of training, but you’ll be rewarded for doing it! Let that mountain bike ride be your intensity day each week. Push hard, have a blast.

The 50 CTL note. 50 CTL is not that much. I carry between 80-100 for months at a time with no recovery issues. And am a mediocre athlete at best. Also indicates room for more durable and deep aerobic fitness.

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A bit more background.
When I started cycling last fall I knew that I probably had a poor aerobic capacity, so I spent most riding time the last year trying to build it with a lot of riding in the 130-150 Range.
I think it worked pretty good because now I can ride pretty comfortably at those levels and a bit above.
When I started doing group rides I notices that as soon as the efforts were long and half-hard I struggled. (climbs up to a few minutes were OK due to my glycolytic abilities).
I figured that I have not really exposed my slow twitch muscles to a lot of lactate as fuel, and also I have not really tried to use type 2 fibers aerobically.

You are probably right though, I should not drop the easy rides completely

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Mitochondria density takes years (studies point to 5-7 but who really knows) to develop. Without prior testing it would be more difficult to say how much this training improved your fitness markers. Now you have this testing point so you will be able to compare and evaluate whether training brings the wanted adaptations.
To give a bit of an overview, for highly trained athletes LT2 is in 80-85% of VO2max (there are some extreme examples of close to 90% but those appear to be not only pros with 25+ weekly hours but also predominantly type 1 twitch). You can easily compare (or even guesstimate if you do not have all out effort data) your 5-8 minutes max effort wattage against LT2. I would guess that is still significantly under 80%. This would point to the fact that VO2max is not limiter and your training should focus on work below LT2 to improve that fractional utilization.
Your ability to produce 22mmol and sports background shows that you definitely do not lack anaerobic qualities as well. Based on this information (and assumptions), I would focus on high volume of easy riding + tempo/SS workouts (maybe also some high torque low cadence work at tempo to recruit more type 2 fibers). In INSCYD terms - bringing the Vlamax down. If it’s not a winter season on your side, do not completely forget about sprinting. Doing 5-15 second sprints during your regular endurance ride will not prevent your aerobic gains and will help with max power and muscle recruitment.

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