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Lactate testing right after 5 week break

  • Creator
    Topic
  • August 19, 2019 at 10:14 am #26943
    Dane
    Participant

    Hi. After spending the first half of the year training for Mt Rainier I decided to take about 5 weeks off from anything structured before I started training for a 50k next spring. I was still going hiking a little and walking to work a lot (it’s about 6 miles one way) so I was still active other than the past week where I stayed off my feet as much as possible to let my ankle rest since it had been bothering me for a few months.

    Today was my first day of transitioning and I figured I’d start with a AeT test using a Lactate Plus to get off on the right foot. The problem is that after a 15 minute warmup I the did first 3 minute period with an average HR was 116 and lactate was 3.0. It just went up from there. I checked after I got home the exact same way I did when I was doing the test and got a reading of 1.1.

    When I was training for Rainier I was using an AeT in the upper 140’s and that seemed to be about right (every time I felt my breathing get a little deeper I’d check my watch and sure enough I’d be approaching the upper 140’s).

    Can the threshold really drop off that quickly? I was thinking maybe I didn’t warm up enough or my warmup was too hard (average HR was 120). Would I be better off doing a few weeks of easy transitioning and then retesting?

    Thanks

  • Creator
    Topic

Posted In: General Training Discussion

  • Inactive
    Anonymous on August 20, 2019 at 9:29 am #27004

    It does sound like your warm-up may have been too hard. The fact that you got to 3.0 so quickly, did so at a low heart rate, and then dropped to ~1 after more activity suggests that an easier, longer warm-up may be what you need.

    I don’t think you need to wait a few weeks to retest. Whenever you feel recovered, test again and warm up slowly. Then make each test stage increase in ~5 beat increments. You want to “sneak up” on your AeT without jumping right past it.

    Also, I found it pretty tough to test strictlky by HR when running or hiking outside. I eventually switched to doing all of my testing on a treadmill to keep the stage loads more controlled.

    Inactive
    Anonymous on August 20, 2019 at 10:21 am #27021

    It sounds like the test was not accurate. With your base level of activity your AeT will not have dropped much at all in this 5 week period. Something else was up with this test. Re-test when it is next convenient and you are rested.

    Scott

    Participant
    Dane on August 20, 2019 at 11:37 am #27028

    Scott and Scott

    Thanks for the replies.

    I’ll try again this weekend with a longer/easier warmup. I don’t have easy access to a treadmill so I’ll have to keep trying outside and see how it goes.

    I think you’re right SJ about it being something erroneous. I tried again out of curiosity after a 30 min run this morning with an average HR of 126. I got a reading of 3.3 and then about a minute later tried again being really careful to not touch my skin or smear the blood and it read 0.9. So unless lactate clears a lot faster than I thought I’m guessing I was contaminating it somehow.

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