-First off. The official word is that the course for the Run Thru the Woods was 5.2 miles. That’s nice to know and makes the race even better. Felt good and smooth running that fast (roughly 23:50 for 5mi) so that’s a good sign.

-Secondly, for those interested I try and keep you up to date on my little “science” experiments I have ongoing. Did the latest Lactate Test and the results were interesting/good. (I don’t want to give specific lactate levels, speeds, because that’s personal info, but it doesn’t matter. The analysis is what should help others).

The V4 (velocity at 4mmol) improved by roughly 2%.
The Anaerobic Capacity(combination of max Lactate and speed at max Lactate) improved by roughly 2%. (Very surprising. Ran 51 flat 400m during this test in flats w/ a 10mph wind after running the LT portion. Felt good, good to have that speed back. I’m betting I could PR in the 400 right now in spikes, fresh, on a good day.)

That means that aerobic endurance improved by 4% roughly (V4=improved aerobic endurance and you have to add in the fact that an improvement in anaerobic capacity shifts the curve to the left or in essence decreasing V4. So to give a very rough estimate of how much aerobic endurance improved, you have to take Anaerobic Cap. into account and add that to V4 improvement. Simplified this means that if there was no change in anaerobic capacity, the V4 would have improved roughly 4%.)

In addition to that the slope of the lactate curve leveled out. That means that at every intensity above LT I was producing less lactate than at the last test.

Analysis:
Anaerobic Capacity-
expected to maintain it, but it improved by a bit.
Reasoning- 10sec hill sprints are the most likely reason. Did these basically weekly. In addition to this did a couple sessions of flat 100m accelerations at just faster than 400m pace. Lastly I added a set of 10x100m (2 easy, 1 good pattern- meaning it’s continous of 2 easy 100m, then run one at a good pace) after the Sunday run. THese things seem to equal an improvement in anaerobic capacity.

Lactate Threshold/Aerobic Endurance- Improved
Reasoning: Did basically a weekly LT session of 35min. During the base phase I do 2 of these a week, so I cut down to one and added some intensity. What seemed to improve it was a combination of things. 3 sessions of 6mi pace variations of alternating 10k pace and 5:20-25 pace continously seemed to do the trick. (example I started with 6mi of 400 at pace, 1200 cruise…last workout in this period was 800 at pace, 800 cruise for 6mi). A session or two of uphill LT running also contributed to the improvement. I needed this because I needed a different stress because after getting to 2x35min per week during base I needed an increase stress. So I did a couple sessions of running uphill for 35min at percieved LT. Also some work just slightly faster than LT as a transition to 10k pace helped. Also after 2 long runs of 2 hours, I did a 15min pickup at roughly 5:30 pace that might have helped. And a 19miler on hilly dirt train could have contributed. In addition to this some of the things that contributed to lower lactate at higher intensities improved this. They are listed below:

Decrease in lactate at higher intensities:
Reasoning: The LT work above and some other things. The biggest reason for this improvement was the variation in pace 6 milers. This added to unique 5k paced workouts (Canova style: ex: 4sets of 5×400 w/ 20sec rest in 65 with long rest in between sets) and long fast runs (or lydiard style Time Trials, basically 5k runs at around 10k pace) done in two seperate road races helped.

That’s it for now. Enjoy.

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