Good afternoon everyone. This morning I had a lactate test at the SportsClinic in Zurich, my third one to date. I didn't go into it with high expectations, because the training I have been doing has been almost exclusively long, slow runs rather than speed work and tempo runs that tend to improve your lactate threshold the most. I was also concerned that my 71km run on Friday would affect the results somewhat.
However, despite my concerns it seems I have improved on all fronts. My body fat % has gone down from 14.8% on the 11/08/2011 to 10.9% today. My heart rate at the beginning of the test last time was 60bpm and this time it was 48bpm (as I mentioned previously I think my true resting heart rate is 40 or below). My anaerobic threshold is now at 14.72km/h compared to 14.25km/h last time. My VO2 max has increased from 53.8ml/min/kg to 58ml/min/kg, and last but not least my predicted marathon time has gone from 3h 16m 39s to 3h 4m 8s.
I really think that once the MDS is over I should be capable of a sub 3 hour marathon if I follow an advanced training program and incorporate plenty of speed work and tempo running. This will probably be my next challenge.
In terms of where I lie within my age group, my results are better than 97% of all people within my age group and better than 51% of all middle and long distance runners within my age group (including also professionals).
Here are the test results from today in a little bit more detail (along with the results from the 11/08/2011 in red):
Speed (km/h) Heart rate (bpm) Lactate (mmol/L) Perceived effort (scale of 6 to 20)
Rest 48 60 2.30 0.86 - -
7 99 89 2.10 1.20 7 7
9 110 114 1.90 1.21 8 9
11 124 125 1.40 1.28 11 12
13 139 140 2.20 1.71 13 14
15 150 154 3.30 3.34 15 17
17 155 162 6.00 4.66 17 18
18.3 160 7.90 19
You will notice that on the last line there are no test results from the 11/08/2011. That is because the maximum speed I ran on the treadmill last time was 17km/h for the full 3 minutes. This time I managed to run at 19km/h for 2 of the expected 3 minutes (each level is meant to be run for 3 minutes), which is interpreted as having ran at 18.3km/h for the full 3 minutes. I did not even attempt this speed last time.
My current race predictions are as follows:
Marathon (42.195km) 3:04:08h
Half marathon (21.1km) 1:25:22h
10km 37:00min
5km 17:26min
1.5km 4:36min
When I did my first lactate test on the 16/03/2011 (which was one month before I ran the Zurich marathon), my marathon prediction was 3:21:22h and I went on to do it in 3 hours 29 minutes and 51 seconds with very bad pacing (I went off way too fast and then completely bonked in the last 10km). Even if we assume that the predicted times from the test are a little ambitious I am still looking at a time of around 3 hours 10 minutes now. Ten minutes of improvement and I would be sub 3 hour. That would be great to do my second ever marathon in sub 3 hours.
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