Wax on - Wax off - Wax on - Wax off

Motivation:

"Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted."~Eleanor Roosevelt

Diary:

b: eggs and turkey sausage
s: yuck, forgot protien bar, so I tried to mix a protien drink, but it didn't work, and was a chunky chalky mess.
l: chicken think - noodles, carrots and celery, chicken breast, etc
s: peanut butter and celery, vitamins
s: orange
d: turkey burger, corn, rice noodle, peanut sauce, other funky stuff,
g: back to training routine - walk 90 seconds, jog 60 seconds, walk 90 seconds, jog 60 seconds. I did this for about 30 minutes. It is starting to feel like Mr Miagi on The Karate Kid. The routine is annoying, but I understand the reaonsing. I can feel my body tiring very easily after the first couple rounds, and I have to really move to get my body into a jog pace. Hopefully this will go better and easier over time.

Notes:

Feeling better today. My legs can go up and downstairs without a lot of pain, so good to go. I spend a couple hours this evening outside watching High-School Varsity Baseball. It was cold, windy, blustery, almost painful to be outside in such conditions. I would expect this weather in March, not May. It is only going to be worse this weekend. Cold, Windy, Rainy, miserable. Not good for running outside, so I will be going to the gym for my training this week.

I was told recently that if I were to put Soduko on my blog, more people would read it. Well, I am not interested in creating soduko, but here is a link to some puzzles: http://www.websudoku.com/. Now maybe I will get more readers?


Let's talk more about fitness:


A while back, we discussed the Rockport Fitness Test to monitor the development of the athlete's VO2 max. Now we can talk about "the burn" - lactate threshold (LT).

Lactate Threshold is highly trainable. Natural ability still plays a huge role with VO2 max, but for almost every individual, training properly will ramp up LT.

What is Lactate Threshold?
Lactate is a by-product of anaerobic metabolism that is produced across all exercise intensities. In fact, even when you stand up from sitting in a chair, lactate acid is produced. During light and moderate-intensity exercise, the blood concentration of lactate remains low. The body is able to absorb lactate faster than the muscle cells are producing it.

As exercise intensity increases, there comes a point at which lactate removal fails to keep up with the rate of lactate production. This point is referred to as the lactate threshold (LT) and spells the beginning of the end of high intensity exercise. Excessive blood lactate and hydrogen ion concentrations combine to interfere with efficient and proper muscle contraction, and as a result, power output drops, suffering increases and you are forced to slow down.
LT represents the highest steady-state exercising intensity an athlete can maintain for prolonged periods of time.

Scientists use blood tests to find people's lactate thresholds. They measure blood lactate concentration in millimoles (mM) of lactate per liter of blood (mmol/L). LT typically is expressed as a percentage of one's VO2 max OR maximal heart rate.

To determine your LT, you can use a heart-rate monitor.

• Run at as hard a pace as you can sustain for 30 minutes.
• Average your heart rate over the last 20 minutes of the run. That's a good estimate of your lactate threshold.

Factors that affect the rate of lactate accumulation

• Exercise intensity. The harder you work, the more lactate your active muscles produce.
• Diet. If you don't have good stores of glycogen, your high intensity training will be short lived.
• Training status, including the following conditions: Higher mitochondrial density allowing for greater lactate resynthesis; Superior fatty acid oxidation preventing lactate production; Burning fat preserves glycogen as a fuel source for continued exercise; Greater capillary density improving both oxygen delivery to and lactate removal from active muscles.
• Muscle fiber type composition. Slow twitch (Type I) muscle fibers produce less lactate at a given workload than fast twitch (Type II) muscle fibers. Proper training can influence the proportion of slow vs. fast twitch muscle fibers. Slow twitch muscles are are responsible for long-duration, low intensity activity such as walking or other aerobic activity. Fast twitch muscles are responsible for short-duration, high intensity activity, such as dead-lifts.
• Distribution of workload. A large muscle mass working at a moderate intensity will produce less excess lactate that a small muscle mass working at a high intensity. Certain cycling techniques will slow the overall accumulation of lactate by using different muscles.

How to increase LT
1) Review the Factors list above.
2) Train at this intensity for 10 to 20 minutes, 1 day a week for the biggest and quickest cardio improvement. Avoid more days of this intensity to prevent injury or overtraining.

more later,

Chazz