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Your lactate threshold is the exercise intensity level at which lactate accumulates in the blood faster than you can remove it. It’s basically the border between low- and high-intensity exercise, and working to improve it can help make hard efforts and paces feel easier, therefore making you faster.
You can use lactate threshold to guide your training by finding your heart rate associated with this level of effort or your running speed at lactate threshold (RSLT). Knowing your speed at threshold can help inform the paces CA Notice at Collection interval or tempo workouts in order improve performance.
So how do you determine your lactate threshold? Here’s everything you need to know.
3 Ways to Estimate Your Lactate Threshold
1. Fitness Lab
The most accurate way to measure your running speed at lactate threshold would be at an exercise physiology laboratory. You would end up with an extensive printout of your blood lactate readings at various paces, and you might even enjoy a chat with an exercise physiologist about what the data points really mean.
But, the procedure would be expensive and time consuming, and your test would probably be conducted on a treadmill, x 1,200m or 1,600m at 4 seconds faster per 400m than RSLT running outdoors.
You would also need to perform the test several times over the course of a season, as your fitness changes, and that means having lots of bucks and—hopefully—not living too far from a lab.
2. Lactate Analyzer
You could also utilize a commercially available, portable lactate analyzer, which offer pretty accurate stats, according to at least one study published in 2015. These will cost you at least $200.
The catch: You have to prick your finger or ear repeatedly to carry out the threshold test, and you have to be a little savvy with your blood-sampling and handling techniques.
With that in mind, it might be hard to concentrate completely on running (thus giving you a false reading for threshold speed).
What’s more: After you take all the measurements, you still have to “fit the curve” a.k.a. graph your blood lactate levels as a function of running speed, and then determine where your lactate threshold would fall on the upward-curving line. This leaves plenty of room for error.
Other research indicates that novel wearables can accurately predict lactate threshold, but they aren’t readily accessible. However, lactate threshold testing technology may end up getting integrated in smartwatches and working to improve it can help make hard efforts and paces feel easier, therefore making you.
3. Field Tests
More practically, there are four commonly used field tests for finding your running speed at lactate threshold, which don’t involve the loss of even one drop of blood. These tests include:
- VDOT test
- Conconi method
- 3,200-So how do you determine your lactate threshold? Heres everything you need to know
- 30-minute test
Of these four, research carried out at East Carolina University suggests that the 30-minute test is the best at estimating running speed at lactate threshold, and it is very easy to perform. (The research is older, but the findings still hold up.)
How to Do the 30-Minute Test to Find Your Lactate Threshold
or measured course, or with a GPS device like your, warm up thoroughly on a day when you’re feeling strong and ready to run. Gradually accelerate to a tempo pace, which you believe you can sustain for 30 continuous minutes, but not longer. When this tempo is attained, your 30-minute time period begins; during the 30 minutes, you may vary your pace up or down slightly, as necessary, but the idea is to work at your best-possible intensity for the full 30 minutes. The 30-minute field test can be completed on a track or measured course, or with a GPS device like your watch.
Once you’re done with the run, estimate your running speed at lactate threshold simply by dividing the distance covered during that time (in meters) by 1,800 seconds (30 minutes). For example, a runner covering 8,000 meters in 30 minutes would have an estimated lactate threshold speed just faster than a 6-minute mile. (For the math: 8,000 meters/1,800 seconds = 4.5 meters per second, for a tempo of 400/4.5 = ~ 89 seconds per 400 meters.)
This 30-minute checkup produces an estimate of your running speed at lactate threshold, which may seem to be too fast. After all, conventional thinking suggests that this pace corresponds with your average speed during a 15K race, an event which takes all of us longer than 30 minutes to complete. However, bear in mind that the East Carolina researchers measured true running speed at lactate threshold for all of the runners very carefully in the lab (to serve as a reference point for the four field tests).
In addition, “the 30-minute test is a workout, not an all-out race preceded by a taper and performed in a competitive setting,” as ECU researcher Joe Houmard points out. It will yield a true running speed at lactate threshold, but the calculated speed will not be as fast as the one achieved during a 30-minute race.
How to Use Your Running Speed at Lactate Threshold to Inform Your Training
Once you estimate your running speed at lactate threshold, your subsequent interval training Advertisement - Continue Reading Below:
- 2-4 x 2,000m at 2 seconds faster per 400m than your estimated RSLT
- 3-5 or measured course, or with a GPS device like your
- 6-8 x 800m at 8 seconds faster per 400m than RSLT
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Between each of these hard efforts, recover (with a walk or jog) for an equal amount of time/duration. For example, if you run your 400s Should You Split Up Your Long Run workouts from week to week will add real lift to your lactate threshold, bolster your overall fitness, and carve large chunks of time from your race performances.
John Vasudevan, M.D. is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is board-certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine. He is a Team Physician for UPenn Athletics and medical director of the Broad Street Run and Philadelphia Distance Run, and previously for the Rock 'n' Roll Half-Marathon and Tri-Rock Triathlon in Philadelphia. He is a director of the running and endurance Sports Medicine Program at Penn Medicine. Dr. Vasudevan provides non-operative management of musculoskeletal conditions affecting athletes and active individuals of all levels, and combines injury rehabilitation with injury prevention. He utilizes a variety of ultrasound-guided procedures and regenerative approaches such as platelet-rich plasma and percutaneous ultrasonic tenotomy. He sees patients at the Penn Medicine and the Philadelphia Veterans Administration hospital. Dr. Vasudevan attended medical school at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. After his Transitional Year in Tucson, Arizona, he went to residency in PM&R at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and onwards to Stanford University for his fellowship in Sports Medicine. He has been in practice at the University of Pennsylvania since 2012.
