One for the Physiologists

[phillipm]

I've been training fairly heavily for the past 6 months with periodisation and I'm accustommed to feeling a fair amount of lactic acid build up, particularly in my quads.

The past 2 weeks have been tapering and the last 2 1/5 days have not ridden the bike at all. In fact, I haven'e done any exercise - apart from building a new bike.

Am I wrong to expect to feel less lactic acid with the rest? Reality is that I feel more, and also feeling some ****ling aches similar to a early season workout that I haven't felt while training.

Any clues??

 

[Smartt/RST]

I've been training fairly heavily for the past 6 months with periodisation and I'm accustommed to feeling a fair amount of lactic acid build up, particularly in my quads.

The past 2 weeks have been tapering and the last 2 1/5 days have not ridden the bike at all. In fact, I haven'e done any exercise - apart from building a new bike.

Am I wrong to expect to feel less lactic acid with the rest? Reality is that I feel more, and also feeling some ****ling aches similar to a early season workout that I haven't felt while training.

Any clues??

This may be semantics, but let me just say that I don't think that "feeling lactic acid" is really at issue here. A well trained and well rested system can work for extended periods with significantly elevated levels of lactate. Most notably, cyclists are able to TT at intensities well above a measured level of lactate that is equivalent to a maximal steady state (i.e.: "threshold" or intensity equal to a maximal 1hr effort).
I can only speculate, but 6 months of training is a long time. It is possible that you overreached a bit; a constant feeling of burning when attempting to perform high intensity efforts is common in this situation.
Or, perhaps you have "over tapered" (for lack of a better term), which has left your legs feeling heavy ("****ling aches"?) due to a lack of circulation/stimulation.
I don't really have a physiologic explaination for you, except that lactate per se is not a cause of fatigue.

 

[phillipm]

This may be semantics, but let me just say that I don't think that "feeling lactic acid" is really at issue here. A well trained and well rested system can work for extended periods with significantly elevated levels of lactate. Most notably, cyclists are able to TT at intensities well above a measured level of lactate that is equivalent to a maximal steady state (i.e.: "threshold" or intensity equal to a maximal 1hr effort).
I can only speculate, but 6 months of training is a long time. It is possible that you overreached a bit; a constant feeling of burning when attempting to perform high intensity efforts is common in this situation.
Or, perhaps you have "over tapered" (for lack of a better term), which has left your legs feeling heavy ("****ling aches"?) due to a lack of circulation/stimulation.
I don't really have a physiologic explaination for you, except that lactate per se is not a cause of fatigue.

Thanks Michael,

I was just doing some reading on Lactic acid being a "good" thing and it's actually hydrogen that causes the problems.

I take your point about over tapering, due to time constraints I've also dropped my normal long aerobic session but maintained the anaerobic (although on a sliding scale). I'll do a couple of long slow rides and see how I come up.

Thanks again.