Thanks Mark. Enjoy reading these insights. To be honest, the more I learn about training, the more I’m coming to the conclusion that going by feel isn’t that wrong after all, lol. But the really valuable point to me is to understand where that feeling is coming from, whats happening in my body at that point, to sort of verify it.
Agree with you that the ‘burn’ is more a ‘working well’ type of feeling. Never really understood why cyclists call that ‘pain’, but was interested if there is some sort of observable relationship with lactate build-up.
Yes, there is a whole emotional and ego thing around no pain, no gain, HTFU, epic rides, etc. That is all fine but to call riding a bike for fun “suffering” is humorous in a way. Five hour mountain bike ride on amazing trails??? Hurt me some more please!!!
Structured training really works, but frankly so does riding. Somewhere in the forum I posted a view from a group ride conversation. A bunch of us were discussing how we have done over years and how training and racing had evolved. The exact numbers don’t matter but consensus was something like this:
Riding a lot and racing probably extracts 80-85% of your potential.
Adding some purpose work (hill climbs or intervals) gets maybe 5% more.
A structured plan gets you another 5-10%
Finally, a great coach might extract another 5%
We won’t quibble about the numbers as they are for illustration not quantitation. I thought the theme was interesting and shared by a bunch of guys where the least experienced person had raced for 20 years or so.
What have you learned about that? My basic understanding is that training at aerobic threshold is targeting:
increases in stroke volume
increases in mitochondria in aerobic muscle fibers
increases in fat utilization
And that stroke volume is maximized at low intensities, in the range of 40-60% vo2max. And stroke volume scales linearly with weekly volume. Mitochondria response at these low intensities is driven by total number of contractions. (I haven’t paid attention to fat-vs-carb) So at these low intensities it’s primarily driven by a lot of weekly volume.
I agree with your post, just would like to add or point out the myth that stroke volume is maximized at comparatively low intensity (ie 50-70%HRmax). According to studies, that might be true for untrained and unfit persons, but for moderately trained and above, the stroke volume continues increasing with increased intensity.
Pretty much the general ease of recovery and items you mentioned.
I was bouncing around between SIT, SST and just randomly picking workouts. Decided I’d give a good block of 8-10 weeks riding VT1 plus keep up the weights and as weather permits will mountain bike on weekends.
Well I did my second test of the season this morning. For the past 8 weeks I’ve been doing a modified SSB1, picking usually 2 of the SS workouts, along with doing a tempo run, and a tempo/ss swim. The goal of each block is to keep the metabolic goal between the 3 sports similar. I repeated a few of the weeks so that I could fit the 3 or 4 weeks of work with 1 week recovery, having the Christmas week off, and this coming up week will still be a bit of a supercompensation week, but will be almost entirely LT1 work. Also worked on increasing volume, so the last month, all work weeks were 10+ hours.
As I started to set up the test though I realized that I only had 8 test strips, so I decided to cut out a few of the lower intensity test points but I also forgot that I had wanted to add in another middle intensity one to better gauge MLSS. Looks like I need to make a few notes on the test protocol, as this one wasn’t quite as ideal as the last one. I’ve got a clear shift to the right at most of the points, and even a slight decrease in lactate levels at the middle intensity points of about 1 mmol. But testing 290 watts, the levels got a bit higher, so MLSS is somewhere between 276 and 290 so I’ll just keep it at the manually set 285 for the next block. I did notice that my zero offset was slightly different for this workout, but there has been a recent warming up here so my basement could be a bit different temp. My HR response was identical to the previous ramp, but this test indicates that MLSS is now a slightly lower HR than the test back in October. Then when I tried to do my 110% block, I was at one of those crappy spots for a dumb-trainer where the cadence is either slower than ideal, or faster than ideal to hit the power target. But the > threshold target is just to really show how the curve steepens after MLSS and that was definitely met. The raw lactate readings though don’t quite match the average power, as I still held 315 or so for the last 3 minutes of the step but the first two minutes were a bit all over the place. So by my estimate, MLSS is now about 285 watts, but instead of 7.5 mmol, closer to 6.5 mmol, so I should be able to hold it longer. I also lost about 5 pounds during this block. I drank some carb drink right before starting, and I’m wondering if it had an influence on the higher baseline than before. Or at least the higher calorie intake the past week with Christmas candies and such. Crazy to see how much a small difference in diet can change those readings. Also gives some credence to only fueling the harder/longer workouts if working on increasing fat oxidation.
The next block all of my intensity will be in the 105% power range starting at 4-6 minutes and progressing to the 4x8 min at 105%
Great stuff - thanks for the share and time to type it up.
My next test won’t be for a few months. Am going to run the same protocol in terms of steps that I posted above. I might skip a couple of the finger sticks at lower levels but keep the wattage steps the same.
Meanwhile, 10 weeks (*) planned for gym lifting, riding a lot of Z2 inside and hitting the trails when weather permits. Not sure what to expect on the bike as that is not a dedicated training plan to drive just on bike metrics. The Z2 work is meant to drive the expected results but the gym work and mtn biking may counterbalance to some extent.
Am trying to get my lab rats back to test but have not been successful. Busy folks trying to find time and all that. One guy in particular I want to get a good LT curve on.
Interesting potential test development - a buddy might get his hands on a PNOE device. No idea if those are robust but if he gets one we’re giving it a go.
HNY folks and open invite to anyone with a lactate meter to jump into and participate in the thread and post their curves!!
-Mark
(*) 10 weeks as I’m running a 5 week weightlifting plan. Just finished first round and planning to do at least two more. Along with the Z2 bike work. When those rounds are done will start into a program similar to SSBMV II
Why do people underestimate? I believe this is simple - your MLSS doesn’t change much during the year. What changes is your mental ability to tolerate riding at MLSS / FTP. There is likely a big take home in there about what training BASE - BUILD - SPECIALITY is really doing. For well trained and experienced athletes (self included) it’s a lot more mental than physical. YMMV and you may disagree.
Alex Hutchinson wrote an entire book about this. I think you are right. This begs the question, can we tease out what training actually changes physiology versus that which changes our ability to tolerate the discomfort (lower RPE for the training or race)?
I suspect that it’s generally the case loooong aerobic based training makes fundamental changes to an individual’s physiology. We are talking year over year. Short bouts of eye-bulging intensity work make changes at a neuromuscular and enzymatic level.
I wonder if the the threshold stuff increases that ability to tolerate discomfort more so than make fundamental changes to an athlete’s actual capacity? FTP relative to VO2max is an indication of the level of “suffering” an athlete has to go through to hold MLSS.
It would be awesome if there were long term studies on this - distinguishing training that changes the brain vs the body. TR probably has a decent amount of data but it would be difficult to distinguish controls given that the training regimens are all over the map as each of us implements a plan very differently from the design.
Just having a re-read of some of this. Do you think the delay in getting a reading due to you doing it yourself affects the reading to any meaningful extent or does lactate not alter that quickly?
Maybe off by some fraction but serum lactate isn’t going to change meaningfully in the 30-45 seconds it takes. If you look at steady state the data are pretty consistent at and below MLSS. Mostly just a pain in the butt compared to having someone take the sample for you.
Also, my lactate numbers are concordant with other data. So I’m confident in LT1 and MLSS. More than good enough estimates to guide my training.
What I probably can’t see is if MLSS moves 5 watts or LT1 moves a small amount. But that’s not really the goal and the imprecision of the different measures adds up so can’t get too worried about small changes.
Yes. The lancets I use are sterile single use safety lancets. I use 28g on myself but keep several gauges on hand as I test other riders and some bleed better than others.
My procedure for self testing is:
Hop off bike
Clean finger with an alcohol wipe
Poke finger with disposable lancet
Wipe off first drop of blood with clean paper towel
Test second drop
Record value
Back on bike
Took longer to type that than it takes to do it.
When testing laboratory volunteers I wear gloves and do all the swabbing, poking and testing for them. So they keep pedaling. I have a container for disposal of the contaminated materials.
Where do you buy supplies - lactate.com? I see that they show out of stock on meters and I’ve also seen other things where lactate meters are not for sale in the US for use on humans. Most links for supplies for sale lead to the UK or Europe. Any recommendations? My wife is a doc if that helps buying from a good supplier in the US.
My other question - has anyone who is doing lactate testing done specific sub threshold tests to measure aerobic capacity or above threshold tests to measure anaerobic.
This is the kind of stuff Jan Olbrecht was doing on swimmers 30 years ago in order to prescribe training. Of course, it’s probably easier to do Inscyd testing.
Yes, I have a lactate plus and that is the web store I’ve used.
Been 100% reliable, quick delivery on strips. My meter is a yellow one, different from the model currently shown on lactate.com page. Looks like Nova has some new branding called Stat-Strip (their web site).
If able to access professional pricing on supplies might be a savings. Worth having her drop a note to Nova to ask where to buy their products.
When I got into this thought it would be fun to do and see if I could understand and use the data for myself and a few friends.
Had taken a couple lactate tests before but never really used the data or found it very useful. With this MLSS testing it basically confirmed that my FTP was set correctly and that my prior 40km TT performances were in line with those numbers. The LT1 data shown above was a fairly good test and Biotechnik did a good test too. I will repeat that same protocol soon and see if anything has changed.
If I ever get back to training really hard and consistently curious if I can move that MLSS number.
I’m interested in learning about other protocols to run and what those numbers and tests might inform. Feel free to post results and thoughts in the thread.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to get started this year. I do have a connection. A guy in my bike club is in the exercise physiology department and is willing to do full metabolic testing for the cost of test strips and also run my data through Inscyd. I’m going to do that this spring.
I don’t know what the other protocols are yet. I’ve been meaning to buy Olbrecht’s book to start studying. But from what I’ve gathered reading articles and listening to podcasts is that he could have a swimmer do a prescribed workout - like a warmup and then some standard sub-threshold routine. He’d only take one or two lactate measurements. They would use those measurements over time to determine the athlete’s aerobic condition. I guess that in the most simplistic interpretation, if the swimmer is producing less lactate during the same test, he has gotten fitter, more lactate slower, etc.
Olbrecht later developed some algorithm (unpublished AFAIK) that he would plug the numbers into. I’m not sure what it would spit out but from there he would develop the training prescription. Inscyd software is sort of the evolution of those ideas.
I’ve been wondering if similar prescriptions could be teased out with lactate measurements and maybe using the analytics in WKO.
