David Dinsmore explains how lactate threshold testing has helped him train more effectively and improve his times in leaps and bounds.
LIKE many runners, I started doing cross-country in school and progressed to road races and club running. I was a reasonable club runner, with a half-marathon best of 72:02 and a marathon best of 2:43:18. That was many years ago, though, and I hadn’t done any serious running for over 30 years until I began again in 2011, prompted by increased weight and health worries.
I lost weight and gained fitness fairly quickly, and ran a 43:12 10k after a few months’ training, but kept struggling with a persistent hamstring injury and lack of progress. I’d train for a while, make some progress, overdo it, take a break and repeat. Sound familiar?
I became increasingly frustrated that I wasn’t progressing, and was actually going backwards. What I was doing wasn’t working, but how to change it?
I soon came across Matthew Bidwell of Fitness Analytics and the concept of lactate threshold testing. I booked a test and turned up one Saturday morning at his Claregalway home.
The test was conducted by the former runner and now coach David Tune, a leading proponent of the method. He and his partner Jenny Blizard were over from Britain for the weekend, training Matt to conduct the tests.
What’s involved?
Testing is quite simple. A blood sample is taken with a finger prick and analysed to obtain the baseline. You then run on a treadmill for periods of three minutes at increasing speeds while your heart rate is monitored and further samples are taken.
The critical point is when the level of lactate in your sample suddenly jumps, which coincides with a jump in heart rate. This happened with me at a speed of 7:37 per mile. This speed is my lactate threshold and is the key to my current training programme.
Following the test I received a detailed report, which Jenny talked me through. As well as giving useful data on blood iron, body composition and cadence, the key information was the heart-rate zones in which I should be running to maximise the benefits of training.
For me the so-called recovery zone was 140-147 beats per minute (BPM), the threshold zone was 148-154, the tempo zone 155-169 and the interval zone 170 and above. The bulk of my training would be done in the threshold zone, but all the zones should feature to a varying degree, depending on how my fitness developed.
The key message here is that it’s not about the pace at which you’re running; it’s about your heart rate. For example, if I’ve had a hard race or am not feeling well, my recovery run could be at five- or even six-minute kilometres.
An essential piece of advice from Dave was to stop looking at the pace setting on my watch and start looking at the heart rate. Staying within the correct zone during a run is more important than worrying about the pace.
Armed with a schedule based on the results I began training again. I had managed only 45:57 for 10k in April and wasn’t in great shape. Based on my performance, Dave reckoned 41 minutes for 10k and near 20 minutes for 5k was possible, although I was sceptical.
After six weeks on the new schedule I ran 20:13 for 5k and a couple of weeks later 41:10 for 10k. Subsequently I clocked 99 minutes for a 20k trail run with a 400m climb.
Many other runners have taken the test with Matt and achieved similarly impressive results, including in the recent Dublin marathon. Matt himself is one of the best advertisements for the regime, recently setting a PB of 31:59 when winning the Breaffy 10k.
What is lactate threshold?
We’ve all heard of lactic acid, a product of anaerobic exercise. Provided you’re running slowly enough, the body can use the lactate and levels do not rise significantly. Reach a certain pace, however, and a rapid build-up of lactate in the blood signals that the body cannot cope at that pace.
Running at your threshold heart rate for most of your training will allow you to maximise each run and develop your aerobic endurance. The bulk of your training will be in this zone, with varied amounts of recovery, tempo and intervals as appropriate.
As you get fitter you’ll find you can maintain this for longer and your pace will increase while your heart rate stays the same. But the key at all times is to ignore the pace you’re running at and stick to the heart-rate zone for that particular run, so a heart-rate monitor is essential to this training method.
