[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on August 30, 2020 at 4:18 pm · in reply to: Can high lactate cause a high glucose reading? #44647

Exercise stimulates the liver to release glycogen. In all likelihood, this is an accurate reading rather an erroneous reading.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on May 28, 2020 at 10:22 am · in reply to: Heart rate trust issues #42155

I’ll second Scott’s comment about the Suunto heart rate monitor having issues. I went through 3 new HRMs and new straps and kept seeing occasional periods where the heart rate is too high by like 20-30bpm. I honestly believe there’s a bug in their software. The Suunto monitors are a little bit more complicated in that they have a feature that allows the monitor to save data while swimming and send to the watch once you’re out of the water, but more code means more places for the code to break.

In any case, once I switched to a wahoo hrm I stopped seeing that issue entirely. I still use the Suunto Spartan ultra and it works fine with non-suunto brand Bluetooth heart rate monitors.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on February 14, 2020 at 12:07 pm · in reply to: Help heart rate drift test part 2 #38182

So in the first post when you said 23.5% grade at 3.3 was that a typo? 23.5% is way different than 4.5% grade.

I wouldn’t recommend testing AeT at 4.5% grade. 4.5% AeT pace might be closer to a running pace than than a hiking pace for you.

If you’re a runner you can also do the test at 0% grade or 1% grade (or i guess 4.5%) to find your running AeT, but if you don’t have decent miles under your belt, what is metabolically AeT is going to feel more muscular (i.e. tiring) and require more recovery than hiking at a steeper grade at AeT will. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do training runs on flats or easy inclines like 4.5%, but without a running background you should start by finding AeT while hiking.

Do the test at the highest incline your treadmill will allow. Hopefully the grade is 15% rather than 10%. If you’re lucky and have a treadmill that goes above 15%, all the better.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on February 14, 2020 at 1:28 am · in reply to: Confusing Lactate Meter Results #38161

I recently got one as well. I’ll share some insights mostly gained from a close reading of Scott’s guide here on UA as well as the triathalon guide on lacate.com (it’s hidden under site map).

For aerobic runs you should be messuring lactate levels *during* the run. if this isn’t feasible then measure immediately after stopping. Even 2 minutes is too long. Taking multiple measurements post-run is more meaningful for speeds which involve substantial anaerobic metabolism (maximum lactacte steady state and above) since at that intensity lactacte should actually continue to increase after you stop as lactate leaks out of your muscle cells. But if your lactacte increases much post-aerobic run you might be working too hard since the lactate produced during aerobic work should be below your shuttling capacity even while stopped.

Think about what purpose is in using the meter. For aerobic efforts the goal should be to pin down your aet or verify you’re below your aet.
For z3/anarobic threshold efforts the goal is to find your maximum lactacte steady state which should correspond to your anaerobic pace. According to lactate.com, incresses in MLSS speed directly predict changes in race performance (although i wonder whether they were really thinking of ultra/all day efforts when they said that). For efforts above your anaerobic threshold the goal is measure your anaerobic metabolism ( probably not useful unless you’re training for a track event)

Consider doing a step test to measure your speed/hr at aet (1.8-2 mM or 1mM above baseline) and optionally your speed/hr at 4mM. There’s nothing special about 4mM–this may be above or below MLSS, but it approximates efforts that mix aerobic and anaerobic metabism and changes in speed at 4mm is supposedly a good benchmark for changes in fitness (but so are changes in speed at aet, especially for longer events).

A couple of thing’s I’ve learned:
Use an alcohol wipe and dont subsequently touch your clothing with that finger.
Wipe away the first drop of bloods on a clean paper towel.
You want a nice spherical blob of blood. And the more blood the more likely the reading will be accurate. It’s good if there’s blood left over after you fill the reservoir on the strip. I think this is because contaminants get diluted. If there’s not a lot of blood, you’ll need to lance a second time or else risk wasting a strip on a questionable result.
If you’re resting solo, single use lancets are convenient. Be sure to get something that goes deep and wide for lots of blood. I use 1.8 mm depth with a 23g needle. That may be excessive if you’re not a climber.
If you’re on a treadmill you can prep the reading (alcohol, strip, lancet) while running. You really only need to step off to touch the blood to the strip.

Finally, it took me a couple of vials to start getting (mostly) consistently good measurements so be stick with it.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on February 13, 2020 at 12:02 pm · in reply to: Help heart rate drift test part 2 #38128

Reiterating what rockwind1 said: don’t do an AeT test after weightlifting. My heart rate during an aerobic run is usually ~5-10 bpm higher if running after doing weights or a core circuit. It doesn’t seem to matter what muscle group. I think it’s more about sympathetic elevation than muscle fatigue.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on February 11, 2020 at 11:00 am · in reply to: HR Dipping During Steady Efforts #37974

The regularity of the dips is weird, but I’m also surprised how flat the heart rate is otherwise. Mine usually randomly bounces within a 5+ bpm range during steady state (even on a treadmill).

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on November 6, 2019 at 11:15 am · in reply to: AeT Thought Experiment #31349

The PTE curve you’re describing is a concept discussed and constructed in cycling, where doing all-out-efforts of a given duration can be pretty quickly recovered from (see https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/4-key-uses-for-the-power-duration-model/). But even in cycling, I think the curve is mostly constructed to estimate PTE for periods shorter than an hour. The idea of trying to PR a marathon just in order to estimate your AeT so you can train better doesn’t seem worth it given the amount of recovery that a ~3 hour effort will incur.

It’s possible that your inability to sustain what you’ve estimated as your AeT is due to muscular limitations. Scott has mentioned that for very aerobically fit individuals, training at AeT incurs a high recovery because of neuromuscular demands and that athletes in this situation need to train mostly in zone1 (rather than zone 2) with some zone 3/4 to push their AnT higher.

The overarching question you’re asking seems to be “what intensity should I do most of my training at?” It seems that you have your answer right here:
“When the HR drift test ended I was happy to be done and I would have been very unhappy if I would have had to repeat it the next day.”

The most fundamental way of determining base intensity is identifying an effort that you can 1) recover from in 12-24 hours and 2) maintain a high volume at that intensity for weeks to months without breaking down.

If your estimated AeT doesn’t fit those criteria, then find an easier effort level that does.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on April 8, 2019 at 2:51 pm · in reply to: Where do I start? #20191

With regard to what Scott means about mountaineering clubs–you need to be prepared for variability in the fitness, motivation, and experience of not just your fellow students but also in your instructors. The sort of clubs that Scott is referring to are typically volunteer run. Member-instructors can range from highly experienced climbers to newly minted graduates of the club’s introductory program who think they know everything. If you go this route, just be sure to be discerning in your choice of who to trust as a mentor be sure to do your own research about techniques.

I’ll add that there might actually be a benefit to joining a club like this over learning from a guide. Friends who have taken mountaineering classes from guides have expressed frustration that after the guide-class they don’t have a community of people to practice with and don’t feel comfortable going out without a guide. By contrast, these volunteer clubs typically emphasize that they are not guide services and their goal is to teach members so that they become self-sufficient climbers. In active clubs there can be a lot of opportunity to get out and climb/mountaineer.

This may be a moot point if the place you’re living doesn’t have a mountaineering club. If that’s the case your best bet may be trips to mountains to take guide courses. You’re still going to need to put in some effort to find climbing partners though.

I think whatever route you take, the most important factor is your own determination to keep learning and to keep acquiring experience. It’s also going to take a balance of willingness to just go out and get experience on climbs tempered by a cautious self-awareness of what you should be attempting for your given experience level.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on March 26, 2019 at 4:24 pm · in reply to: Simultaneous Climbing and Running Training #19133

You probably climb harder than me, so take this with a grain of salt. There’s a lot to say on the topic of mixing endurance training with climbing training but I’ll start it off with the recommendation to start a hangboard regimen. Hangboarding in general is one of the best tools to improve climbing ability (besides climbing), and is particularly effective when you’re trying to balance climbing training with endurance training because the recovery time from hangboard will only minimally interfere your running training and recovery. Ie–you should find it possible to overlap running and hangboard without too much added fatigue.

ARCing (high-volume continuous easy climbing for endurance) and power work (bouldering, campus) are important climbing training tools as well, but the problem is that these are much more demanding overall so it’s easy to venture into overtraining land when mixing them with running training.

If you don’t need to peak both running and climbing fitness simultaneously, your best bet will be to alternate periods of focusing more on climbing with focusing more on running. Whether you have time to achieve a peak in climbing fitness this year before your race will depend on your training history in both sports.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on February 22, 2019 at 3:28 pm · in reply to: HR Zones – Traditional cf TFTNA #16944

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the zones on your watch, or even the percentage-based heart rate zones in the book. Using heart rate to assess effort is really just used to determine what that effort is relative to your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. Ie, at or below the aerobic threshold (most of your training should be here) between AeT and AnT (relatively little training should be here), and above AnT (some sprint and interval work here). The ratios of time you spend in each category will vary according to your goal (particularly the duration of the event and how variable your effort will need to be during that event).

For establishing aerobic threshold, the approach of using a percentage of your max heart rate is almost worthless because it assumes everyone has the same aerobic fitness. It’s much better to use the protocol listed on this website (https://uphillathlete.com/8-diy-steps-to-figure-out-your-aerobic-threshold-indoor/) to find your personal aerobic threshold heart rate. Once you have that, keep in mind that it is an approximate estimate and may vary according to training (recovery) status. The best measure of whether your workouts are aerobic is whether in general you feel recovered from them the next day. Another way to verify your workout is aerobic is to analyze heart rate drift: https://uphillathlete.com/heart-rate-drift/

Your anaerobic threshold is your all-out 1 hour pace/heart rate. It’s probably not immediately necessary to find this.

I’d recommend finding your aerobic threshold and estimating what percentage of the time you’ve been running with a heart rate at or below the threshold. If it’s much less than 80%, you may want to slow it down if your plan is to build a base for mountaineering objectives.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on January 29, 2018 at 1:07 pm · in reply to: Something bugging me about the Alpine Combine box step #7802

A related topic came up in a facebook discussion a while ago: if you ran up 1000′ of stairs and back down, would your max effort time be the same as 1000′ on a box step? For comparability, let’s say step height is the same. It seems to me the box step is still harder in some sense because you’re changing direction for every step.

In any case, it seems like the benefit of the box step approach is optimal because it’s an easily replicated protocol that can be used to compare fitness between individuals.

But if you’re just comparing how your own fitness changes over time, it’s probably best to just measure your time on your local steep trail since a trail will be more specific than a box or steps.

[Michaeltyoung]

Michaeltyoung on July 26, 2017 at 5:46 pm · in reply to: High than expected sustained HR #5730

I’ll fourth the comment about the suunto chest HR strap. Works great most of the time, but occasionally i’ve seen very high HRs (190bm) when i know i’m around 150 (by feel or by checking my pulse). I switched out for a different sensor and strap (another suunto smart sensor) and the issue hasn’t occurred again (yet) so it may only happen with certain units.

My advice is to check your pulse next time. Do it at the neck–much easier than wrist while moving–count for 15 seconds and multiply by 4.

For what it’s worth I pretty much always wear earbuds when working out and merino wool shirts.