Is the Lactate Treshold at the beginning of the season the same as at end?

Experts out there, please help me. Is the LT at the beginning of the season at the same level of heartrate as at your peak (during the season)?So for example, if my LT is 182 bmp at my peak, is it still the same when I start a new season after resting for about 2 weeks without doing anything. Lets suppose that I am always rested and fit, so the conditions are always the same.

Thanks for the answers.

Hey Mihech,

From my experience, HR is always higher after taking the two week, end-of-season break.

Also, it was always lowest at LT when my training load was high.

And it could be high or low for several other reasons, which is why I didn't like to judge my efforts with it.

After using a HR for about many years, I usually found myself not even looking at it...just riding at Tempo or LT based on my percieved exertion. My training went much better this way.

It can vary of about 2 bpm (it's a very short range of variability). The thing that will vary is the power you can express when in threshold (range of variability: up to 50 W)

How can you say that when HR for constant power can vary by 10 or more bpm in the course of a single 30 minute TT? I'm talking about variability from the mean HR reached after 7 to 10 minutes till the end of the effort or HR drift. With that kind of variability over a single effort how can you say HR at LT or any other reference point stays constant within 2 bpm across the course of a season? Would that be HR measured after x minutes of LT effort following y minutes of warmup..... Seems pretty tough to nail seasonal HR down with that kind of accuracy without really specific and repeatable testing protocols, even then I'd be sceptical.

Due to (some) coaches not knowing what they're talking about, we end up with a question like yours (that's not a slam against you).

Some coaches talk utter nonsense that they pretend is based in science, and then promulgate their rubbish.

Anyway, lactate threshold has nothing, whatsoever, to do with heart rate. As the name suggests it's to do with [blood] lactate, and that means having blood taken.

While there are a couple of definition's of LT the main two are the work rate that elicits a 1 mmol/L increase over exercise baseline levels, which results in a lactate of 2.something mmol/L. This is the Coyle definition (and the one that i use when i venture into a lab).

The other definition is the work rate that elicits a fixed 2.5 mmol/L (so, not hugely different from the Coyle definition). This is what i call the Coggan definition.

In these definitions (and all others) it's work rate (power in cycling measured in watts; or velocity in running measured in km/hr or m/s) and lactate (measured in mmol/L). No mention, whatsoever of HR.

Looking at the above definitions, these are both lowish intensities of exercise, coming out at about 10 - 15 % less power than that which can be maintained maximally for ~one hour. Thus, LT can be sustained for up to about 3 hrs or so.

At a given power output, such as that which can be sustained maximally for ~1-hr/FTP, you can find your HR can vary by as much as 10 to 15 b/min depending on what's happening (e.g. anxiety, cadence, temperature, fatigue, prior training, etc)

Ric

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"Looking at the above definitions, these are both lowish intensities of exercise, coming out at about 10 - 15 % less power than that which can be maintained maximally for ~one hour. Thus, LT can be sustained for up to about 3 hrs or so."

It "LT" seems to be even lower (in comparison to FT), as i have participated in a clinical trial where the testing protacol involved riding at 15% above lactate threshold for 90 minutes. This procedure was very difficult, but not impossible.


"Experts out there, please help me. Is the LT at the beginning of the season at the same level of heartrate as at your peak (during the season)?So for example, if my LT is 182 bmp at my peak, is it still the same when I start a new season after resting for about 2 weeks without doing anything. Lets suppose that I am always rested and fit, so the conditions are always the same."

This question is actually impossible to answer as heart rate is not a good indicator of power output. (which is what Rick is saying). If you refrased the question- Is power or oxygen utilisation at LT higher or lower in comparison to power or oxygen utilisation at Vo2max when trained, then the answer is that hopefully your training will have brought your LT numbers closer to your VO2max numbers, or in other words, your LT should occur at a higher percentage of your Vo2max when trained. This is because LT is more trainable than VO2max (though both are trainable).

For your question to be meaningful, we need to assume a strong correlation between current HR and current power or oxygen utilisation, which doesn't exist.