Typically, the longer you train the “better” you get.  Now this assumes that the individual continues to apply a stress that challenges the [...]]]> Why do we train?  Well some want to get stronger, some want to go further and some want to get faster.  When you boil it down training means getting better at something. 

Typically, the longer you train the “better” you get.  Now this assumes that the individual continues to apply a stress that challenges the body to promote gains (muscle breakdown).  If you take my house analogy, the more you train, the longer and wider your base of the house gets.  Often referred to as “old man strength” its years of adaptions of continuous fiber breakdown and synthesis that create a stronger, faster, and increased endurance, athlete.  So how can you maximize your gains?  And how long am I going to have to wait?  Here are some systems to help train to give you that stable base to build upon.

Lactate – Lactic Acid – Lactate Threshold

My legs hurt!  The acid, it burnnnnnns!  But isn’t lactic acid from milk?  Hmmm. 

Let’s clear up a few things.  Lactate is produced constantly in the body by red blood cells and resting muscle.  Lactate can become fuel (glucose) for muscles after being converted in the liver or oxidized by other tissues in the body.  Lactate transport in and out of the muscle is dependent on the intensity. During exercise beyond VO2 max, lactate concentration will increase in the muscle fiber, and lactate will appear in the blood (this is why your finger is pricked for testing).  Low levels of lactate will be 1.0 mMol and can go higher than 11+ mMols in very intense exercise.  

For lactate to get into the blood,a protein called monocarboxylate transporter (MCT) must be used.  Lactate moves across the cell membrane into the blood as the undissociated acid, lactic acid. Studies have shown that endurance training can increase the content of MCT transporters.  So a benefit of training is that you can oxidize more lactate and use it as energy.

Lactate as energy?  Not a believer?  Here is the general process of the fate of lactate.  

Glycolysisis the process of converting glucose-6 phosphate (previously glucose or energy) into pyruvate.  Pyruvate has a couple of fates.  It can either enter the cell and be converted to ATP through the electron transfer chain or it can be converted to lactate and then to ATP.  If oxygen is present (aerobic), then pyruvate will enter the cell and produce 6 ATP.  If oxygen is not present (anaerobic), then pyruvate will be converted to lactate and yield 2 ATP.  As you can see staying aerobic is key to the endurance athlete.

Getting tested is the easiest way to find out your “lactate threshold”.  It’s about energy systems.  Think about your race in terms of quantifying fuel.  How much energy do I need?  How much do I have (in storage i.e. liver)?   What does this translate into speed? 

You don’t have to guess about these systems, you can get tested to see how much energy your using at different levels.  The figure above is how they determine what fuel sources are being used (fat, carbohydrate or protein) by the oxygen output.  At higher intensities, the primary energy source being used is carbohydrate, which your body can only store a small amount to be readily used.  At lower levels, fat is being broken down for energy;fat burning becomes the key for longevity (see picture below).   Fat contains twice as many calories as compared to carbohydrate (9 versus 2).  Plus your body has an abundance of it.  Training then becomes teaching your body how to use fat as fuel and store carbohydrate.   I will talk about that more in my next post (aerobic metabolism).

Why work above your lactate system if your primarily training for endurance?  Well the obvious reason is to go faster.  Training at higher levels will help promote protein transport (GLUT-4) of glucose.  Studies have demonstrated that trained athletes have an increase glycogen concentration storage than beginners.  This means that by training, you can swim, bike, and run using carbohydrates longer than an untrained individual.  Burning fat is important but is a slower operation (called beta oxidation) in comparison to carbohydrate usage.  So training gives a bigger gas tank and accelerate usage of the fuel.  Now you can see why longevity in sport is key for performance.  Old man strength could just be a more efficient energy transfer system due to years of exercise.

Training energy systems is a huge topic and one that I will try to break down into smaller, manageable, posts.  It’s interesting stuff and once you buy into it, you can effectively train your system to burn certain types of energy.

Where does the lactic acid theory come from?

The acid theory held sway from an early “frog’s-legs” experiment before the First World War.  Voltage was applied to [...]]]> This is a great article which clears a lot of misconceptions about “threshold” training.  Click here to read the full article or read through the highlights below.

Where does the lactic acid theory come from?

The acid theory held sway from an early “frog’s-legs” experiment before the First World War.  Voltage was applied to dissected frog’s legs, and ph measurements were taken until the muscle fatigued.  The ph at the end of the experiment was much lower than the start, showing presumed “lactic acidosis”. 

The conclusion was that acid was the cause of fatigue, and the acid was present due to the lack of oxygen to transport it away.  The lack of oxygen was probably due to the lack of a body (and lungs) being attached to the legs!  It took the Lactate Shuttle work of George Brooks and his discoveries (see end of this article), from the 1970′s up until today, to change the world’s understanding of lactate physiology. 

So what does happen?

Unsurprisingly, your body doesn’t work like this.  Lactate accumulation, during increasing exercise intensity, is a constantly rising continuum.  But lactate isn’t just exercise induced.  You always have some (even now while reading this), you just get more of it when you exercise and when you exercise even harder, you get even more.

While we’re at it, let’s clear up another confusion.  It’s not Lactic Acid!  Lactic Acid is a neutralizing food additive that is produced from sour milk and used in bakery products, cheeses, frozen desserts, jams and jellies to name but a few.  It won’t make you go faster.  It just makes food taste nice.  Lactate, is lactic acid minus a proton.

Many people use the term lactic to describe lactate.  It’s like using the term him and her for humans.  Yes, we’re all human but as you know there is a world of difference between men and women!  Well lactic and lactate are just like men and women.  Similar but different.

Lactate is a by-product, not a waste product, of exercising.  It should be seen as your friend not your enemy.  Although, as with all things in life, everything in moderation.

Lactate is an output of anaerobic exercise and an input for aerobic exercise.  When you ride within the grey area that’s the boundary of both, you’re potentially in to a free ride.  The person that maximises their wattage at this boundary point is on to a winner.  Quite literally.

If you can produce the same or more power with less resultant lactate, you’re becoming much more efficient as a cyclist.  Cycling is an endurance sport and efficiency is key to conserving your valuable energy resources.  No use being the best sprinter in the race if you’re not there at the end to use it.

At the point just before the Onset of Blood Lactate Accumulation is the Maximum Lactate Steady State level.  This is the point you want to move up your power and speed, and down your heart rate, scale.  Measure your OBLA, train to improve your MLSS, go off and win some time trials, stay away in a break, or climb like a god.

 Some added points

If you want a real live example of how this works then we should look no further than the world of IronMan athletes (like riding partner Richard Davy on the right) and marathon runners.  I’m sure you’ve seen the scenes at the end of the London Marathon or an IronMan event when the skinny leaders come across the line utterly exhausted.

Well here’s a surprise for you.  Their lactate measurements at the end of the event are stupidly low.  The good ones cruise at 1 mmol above their baseline for the majority of the event.  And ramp up to  their maximum lactate steady state level as the race moves on.  And for the swim and run they haven’t even got a power meter! 

These top athletes run right on the edge of their MLSS, remaining aerobic, using predominantly fat for fuel, saving carbs and recycling their pyruvate to get their race winning fuel for free.  When did you last see a marathon runner throwing a load of power bars and gels down their throat in a race? 

We all try to race like a 100 metre sprinter.  We should be thinking with an ultra-endurance athlete’s mindset if we want to be more successful in our quest for greatness.  At least for 99.9% of our chosen event.

Why the hell do my legs hurt?!

The burning in your legs is caused by muscle polar and de-polarisation!  It’s to do with ionisation not acid.

The Cori Cycle

The Cori Cycle is a training partner of the Lactate Shuttle.  It has a different function but it’s complimentary to your understanding of lactate and going faster.

The Cori Cycle describes the metabolic pathway that uses our blood to transport the energy by-product lactate to the processing marvel that is our liver.

Once in the liver, the lactate is converted to glycogen, then to glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis.  The blood is then used to transport the glucose back to the muscles.  Once in the muscle it converts back to glycogen for fuel, is used and if you’re still going flat out is converted back to lactate.  Simple! 

This process cannot be sustained indefinitely.  You don’t get something for nothing in this world; there’s a price to pay for everything. 

The liver cleverly attaches two stored ATP molecules to the incoming lactate to change it to outgoing glycogen.  But it costs the liver six ATP molecules to be able to do this.  So the liver suffers a four molecule deficit for each “upgrade” it carries out. 

Sooner or later (around 30 minutes depending on pre-event hydration and fuelling levels) the energy giving stocks will be exhausted.  When that happens, you bonk, you stop.

The only way to get back in to ATP credit is to back off the intensity until you reach a level of positive balance.  From there, you have to surf the wave that is lactate balance if you want to get to the end of the day before the time cut-off.

On this day I got to relax in the morning.  I still got up at 6:30am to use Clint Leins (Peak Performance) computer while he was out [...]]]> After crashing early (8:30pm!) from yesterdays track, swim and run day, I felt surprisingly well.  A good night sleep has always been my secret to a great recovery.

On this day I got to relax in the morning.  I still got up at 6:30am to use Clint Leins (Peak Performance) computer while he was out at swim lessons.  Today’s schedule was a bike lactic threshold test (LT test) and an easy 45min run.  This was to start around noon so I went out and did one of my favorite thing: shop for groceries.

The LT test was done at the Pacfic Institute of Sport Excellence (PISE).  This is a place where I could really see myself working in the future.  It’s a place where fitness and science are married together for the benefit of all variety of athletes.  Soccer fields outside, huge indoor gym, weight center and of course testing labs inside.  Their soon going to be adding a pool, which now has us multi-sporters covered.

If you’ve never done a LT test I suggest (if your serious about the sport) to get one done.  It’s very helpful number to know.  It also allows you to compare yourself to years previous.

After my 30min commute to PISE I got on a stationary bike for another half hour to make sure I was ready.  I’m not going to lie, the LT test hurts.  You start off at a very easy pace/wattage, this is based on your weight, and then every 3mins the amount of resistance goes up.  At first I just gabbed with the students/employees there.  We talked about what it was like to work there.  What other crazy tests they had performed.  Then the increase in resistance starts to hurt.  It’s game time.

The bike I was riding was fully customizable.  This is to ensure that you can get the best fit that balances your power output and being resonably comfortable.    This bike also had a display showing your watts and the countdown till the next increment.

Before gonig into the LT test I was told that most people always wish they had pushed a little harder.  Why?  Because at some point your sitting in that seat pushing as hard as you can, not going anywhere, going till you give up.  Giving up basically means a drop in cadence by about 10-20%.  Think of going up a hill in your granny gear when all of a sudden it gets so steep, you can’t pedal.  Thats what the end of the test feels like.  Legs go boom.

You know what though?  It’s just a number.  It really has no bearing other than another bit of information to help you train.  Watching some of the other experienced athletes go, they seem to get worked up over what the LT test produced.  Amanda Stevens went before me and she had a bad test, at least in in her eyes.  A bad test could really mean any number of things, over training, bad setup, not enough to eat or just a bad mental lapse.  When your a pro, I guess you live and die by the numbers that you create.

Well anyone who has done this kind of test knows that you feel pretty spent after.  I had reached 10 beats below my max heart rate, which on a bike is pretty amazing.  For my recovery I decided to postpone my run and cycle around Victoria.  I know I was disrespecting the “listen to your coach” rule (see yesterdays post) but it was sunny out.  Damned if I was going to be in doors with my feet up.

I took in the sights along the ocean.  Amazing views which reminds me a lot of Southern Califoria with the number of Ocean front houses.  After a couple of hours I decided that was enough.  Only a run left and I could call it a day.

Out on the run my guts started to do a familiar rumbling.  It wasn’t the sound of hunger.  It was the “I need the bathroom real fast” noise.   I was in the ‘burbs with no gas station or convience store in sight.  I started cramping..  not a good sign.  I knew that my only choice was to go knock on someones door or…. 
Luckily a guy out washing his car let me in his house.  He probably thought it was a little weird but looking at my size, he knew that I couldn’t steal much.  Turns out I was less than a km from Clints house.  Oh well.  It made the jog a lot more comfortable!

In the PM I got a small taste of Victoria’s night life as we went out for music trivia.  It was a good night as Clint ended up winning $10 (after he beat a 16 year old for fourth place).  I ended up being the DD as our company got a little typsy!

So far so good I thought as I drove back to Clints place.  What’s tomorrow going to bring?

Happy Trainin
Cliff