Not at altitude (currently sat at 200m a.s.l.) and don’t have any medical condition that I’m aware of, but equally I’ve never felt the need to pester my doctor with “can you test me for …”
So breathing “failure” as the symptom with lactate handling as the cause. Makes sense. Next question is “is it trainable/improvable?” and then “If so, how?”. From earlier workouts, particularly the over-under ones, I remember Chad’s text talking about “gently flooding the system during the overs and then clearing during the unders” (probably paraphrased) and thinking at the time that I wasn’t really being “flooded”. Likewise during the ramp test my legs weren’t “flooded”, they were starting to become so but still had something to give.
I’m fairly certain I was well hydrated prior to the ramp test under discussion so for the moment let’s discount that - I try and do the same routine for the 24hrs prior to all tests.
A search on the forum brought up this thread - Physiological Zones Question - #5 by bbarrera which brings up the idea of a natural high VO2max but a significantly lower LT2. The thread linked to a couple of Joe Friel’s blogs where he discusses lactate threshold and states that to improve it one should train around FTP, this supports the over-under comment above. Interestingly the thread recommends using a ramp test to ascertain Wattage at VO2max rather than FTP! A web search for equating VO2max with LT2 mostly brings up research papers but I also came across this article Lactate Threshold: Tests, The Science and How to Improve it?
Generally my background is long distance endurance. Since reactivating TR last October I’ve followed SSBLV1 & LV2 and am now on Sustained Power Build. It’s quite possible I’ve accidentally played to my strengths rather than work on my weaknesses doing this. If over-unders are (one of) the key to improving LT2 then maybe I should look at a plan emphasising those.
From the linked thread:
@Captain_Doughnutman -
As for my OP situation, now into SusPowBuild, I’m doing more straight up Threshold work, which doesn’t seem to be a problem; it’s the over-under workouts which are still the biggest pain. This is leading me to believe that ‘lactate clearing’ is my weakness. Unfortunate, as I think Nate said that trait is one of the main predictors of high performance
@mcneese.chad - if this thread is straying then happy to start a new one on the subject - maybe VO2max and LT2 would be a good title.