I think you have very much misunderstood Seilor's article. It would be
pure quackery of him to suggest that untrained athletes won't have high
lactate readings. And he doesn't. The inability to handle lactate
buildup - and thus the need to back off - is a characteristic of lack of
training, just as the ability to handle it is an adaptation of training.
Moreover, this untrained athletes' study measured lactate *after a
race, not during or immediately after a controlled lactate/V02max test
where one is progressively pushed into hyperventilation, typically on a
treadmill at substantial incline and speed. Under the latter
conditions, lactate will go well above 5-7 mmol, which is the whole
point of taking the test.

I am very interested in the protocol of the tests you were given and
the equipment used. Was any part done on snow? Normally, on a treadmill
(w/ or w/o poles) these tests would be done together per a standard
protocol, which takes roughly 20-25 minutes because of the blood draws.
So I'm interested to hear how it got to 1.5 hrs. Was there any
additional warmup beyond the test itself? Tests on rollerskis or snow
not only show different results between themselves and depend on
technique, but also with a treadmill and a bike.

Gene

wrote:


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