Try to make sense of all this training!!!

Lactate threshold I think is the point where your body can't use just oxygen and starts to use lactic acid as energy. You want to race as close the the LT without going over, that was you can have the optimum speed without bonking or slowing down.

Not sure how you find where it is or how you train it however.

All great questions and many new to the sport wonder so I'll take a quick moment to explain them.

Just to be clear, your body is always using oxygen and lactate (not lactic acid) to produce energy (ATP).

Lactate Threshold (LT) is generally accepted as the point at which your body begins to produce more hydrogen ions than it can flush out. Hydrogen ion buildup is what causes muscle fatigue not lactate. However, lactate is measured to quantify this "threshold" (i.e. the threshold when your body is producing more hydrogen ions than it can flush out) because it has been shown through research that the amount of hydrogen ion buildup has a 1 to 1 ratio of lactate production and lactate can be more easily/efficiently measured via blood draw. The reason why a person should know their Lactate Threshold for each sport is because training zones calculated off of the heart rate at this inflection point are more accurate to target your three energy systems than training zones calculated off of your maximum heart rate. Why, you may ask? The reason is because through specific, targeted, adaptive training your LT heart rate (LTHR) will increase and get closer to your max heart rate but your max heart rate will move very little...if at all...through training. Now please understand this is a very basic explanation of lactate threshold without going into more in depth physiological explanations of energy production, the Krebs cycle, the sarcomere, etc...things most athletes don't really care about knowing.

So GENERALLY speaking, yes, when your breathing becomes labored you may very well be above your lactate threshold but there is absolutely no way to know for sure because you can not determine your lactate threshold without blood draws and then graphing the results to view the inflection point. Some people reach LT at 3mmol/l while others reach their inflection point at 5 or 6mmol/l. However, there is good news! There has been research done (let's all give a big hand to the highly underpaid and often underpraised researchers out there) that has determined certain exercise testing protocols (a fancy phrase for field tests) that you can do w/o getting blood drawn at a lab but very accurately can determine your LTHR; which is really what you are looking for anyway in MOST circumstances.

Now without knowing anymore about you than what you've posted (i.e. your medical history, any medications you might be taking, any health issues you may have, etc) I would say yes, the "burning sensation" in your muscles that you feel is almost certainly a sign that you have surpassed your lactate threshold and are producing more hydrogen ions than your body can "deal with".


Edited by Steve- 2009-06-29 11:43 PM

alright, so I ran today. I noticed that my breathing became labored at around 148-150 bpm. I am going to assume that this is my lactate threshold. For training in zone 1, I am going to guess that I need to keep my bpm under 90. Then in zone 2 keep my bpm between 90 and 110. Then zone 3 should be 110 to 140 bpm.

Does this sound right???

I am 5'11" and about 205lbs. I recently weighed 268 up until Christmas of 2008. So I am not I enough good shape as a could be. I run 3 days a week and lift weights the other 3 days and take sundays off. I recently bought a road bike, so I plan to start using it in my training. Other than my weight, I don't suffer from any other physical problems. Except for a bad knee, but I manage it.

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Assuming that you are in good enough shape to do one of the field tests that Steve mentioned, I think you'll be better off doing that than guestimating based on how your breathing feels.  There is a protocol here on BT, here, for doing the tests.  If you're not ready for that test, then you might try reading this article to get started, or just run consistently at a moderate pace until you have built up enough to do the test.

It doesn't sound right... those numbers sound really low, like 20 to 30 beats low.  I think of LT as a "maximum sustainable effort" type of thing.  The protocol Experior mentioned above is a good way for you to determine your LT.  If you do the test correctly, you ought to feel like you want to puke at the end of the TT mentioned in the test.  Have fun.

no, ventilatory threshold is different than lactate threshold. what you are referring to (and experiencing) is ventilatory threshold.

I know this doesn't really answer your question exactly, but I recommend that you just RUN MORE.  don't worry about zones and LT and bpms ... just run more. you'll get faster.

Well you answered your own question... forget about LT ... you just didn't pace yourself.

You usually run a 8:00 MM... but you sprinted off at a 6:30 or 7:00 MM... no wonder you were winded and unable to keep going at that pace.

You might be well served to get yourself a Garmin. That way, you can pace yourself at the start of the race and not get caught up in the excitement.

What kind of Garmin would you suggest?

Most love the 305. I don't really care for gadets and I personally love mine. You can get one w/HR monitor for $200 or less.

The 405 just came out like last year, but you will pay $450 for one w/HR. Or maybe it's $350? Either way, it's considerbly more than the 305.

Look around at gear reviews, etc. and see what you can pull up for the different Garmins.