Gene Goldenfeld wrote:
There was a recent study that shows that readers mistake the tone of
50% of emails. To wit, Joseph, I think you better read again: the word
or idea of irrelevance of LT in x-c skiing, relative or absolute, was
not used by Seiler. His point was that it doesn't set the speed limit
for elite/WC x-c athletes, as it does in other sports. But note that he
is not talking about you or me. His one reference to one existant study
of the latter group notes that lactate levels of untrained competitors
were not measured during the race.

I just got back from my VOmax and lactate profile test. It was 1.5
hours which is longer than most XC races, and certainly longer than the
10k race the untrained folks did in the article. First we did the
latcate profile, then the VO2max. I was wiped out after the last test.
A few minutes after the last test (while I was cooling down) I asked
the tester to run another lactate level test just out of curiosity. It
showed 9.3. I don't know how long after the max effort this was, as it
wasn't part of the formal test. This shows that normal people like us
can have high concentrations of lactic acid, not just elite skiers, and
thus perhaps the observations in the article do apply to us too!

Joseph