ric_stern/RST said:
I don't think you've understood what i've previously written. You can't compare one person's lactate with another it's immaterial. the rider or athlete can produce a sustainable power and that is what's important. for e.g., i can ride maximally for an hour at ~ 300 W at an average of e.g., ~ 4 mmol/L. Conversely, i know people that can ride maximally at > 300 W at more than 4 mmol/L and others at less than 4 mmol/L.
On the other hand, and this maybe where your confusion lies, and this maybe due to poor journalism or reporting by his coaches, as i've previously stated as you ride at high powers you produce more lactate than at low power, however, as you get fitter you produce less lactate at a given workload. however, as can be seen above you can't compare that lactate with other people (the same as you can't compare HRs).
ric
Let me again open up this lactate can of worms. I have come across a very interesting coincidence which perhaps might be considered in forming a new paradigm as regards lactate. It appears that Michael Phelps produces about the same lactate level as Lance Armstrong at peak power output. Are you really sure that low level lactate procuction for the best athletes is not an advantage? It seems a rather striking coincidence.
This is a quote from today's New York Times article on Michael Phelps and his bid to break Mark Spitz 7 gold medal record.
Built to Swim
Published: August 8, 2004
(Page 5 of 11)
In testing conducted by physiologists from USA Swimming, Phelps scored as one of the weakest elite swimmers they had ever measured, but that was on such traditional tests as the bench press and how much weight he can lift with his legs. ''He's fine on land,'' Heinlein says. ''He can walk. He can do all the things you want him to do. But he's not extraordinary in any way. What Michael excels at takes place in water, so what does it tell you to test him on land?''
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At practice one day this spring, I heard Bowman instruct Phelps to ''get his hips higher'' as he lunged for the wall on the finish of his butterfly. The fly is the most difficult and physically taxing of the four competitive strokes, combining a dolphin kick, a constant undulation of the body and a motion in which the arms simultaneously are thrown forward before pulling back through the water. It demands tremendous strength in the abdominal muscles along with exquisite timing. Done well, it is a thing of beauty -- a swimmer seems almost to be skipping over the water like a stone skimmed across the surface. To access the muscles that would bring the hips higher at the finish of this complex set of movements is not easy, but Phelps got it right the very next time. ''What Michael knows how to do, everybody else had to learn,'' says Kevin Clements, a teammate on the North Baltimore team. ''And most of it, he knew the first time he got in the water.''
Swimming is an endurance contest not just within the race, but over a meet. And Phelps has one other gift, a freakish ability to recover quickly, without which he could not even contemplate a schedule in Athens that will require him to swim multiple races on short rests. At a meet in Santa Clara, Calif., in May, I watched as Phelps got out of the pool after a 100-meter butterfly. He was certainly winded, but not like one of those runners you sometimes see staggering around after the finish line. Physiologists from USA Swimming took a pinprick of his ear, routine at such meets for top swimmers, to measure his blood lactate level. Lactic acid is what causes ''muscle burn,'' a sign of the oxygen deficit that causes muscles to shut down. The race had been a long-anticipated rematch against Ian Crocker, the swimmer who beat him a year ago and at the same time took away his world record. On this day, Phelps touched him out at the wall. His lactate level taken immediately afterward was an exceedingly low 5.0 (5 millimoles per liter of blood). Other swimmers after such races typically produce levels of 10 or 15, or sometimes higher. (Crocker's was not measured.)
Like nearly all his gifts, Phelps's aerobic capacity is genetic in some measure but also greatly enhanced by the high-level training that began at an early age -- averaging seven miles a day in practice, 365 days a year. ''His recovery is exceptional when compared to his opponents,'' Jonty Skinner told me. ''He doesn't produce a lot of lactate, and he recovers to pre-race levels in 20 to 25 minutes, sometimes less.''
End of Quote
The last sentence suggests what I suspected and earlier mentioned--that low level lactate production at peak power production may enable the athlete to recover quicker. Instead of the 90 minutes recovery you mentioned for supranormal exertion, Mr. Phelps only takes about 25 minutes.
Does this give you at least a small double take?
