Dwain Chambers' secret weapon

[pierrejean]

@twhite03

Can anybody explain this given the information discussed earlier?

“Doing this kind of analysis on world class athletes tells you a lot of things, for example, on acceleration development days we may do 5x3x10-40m with 3-5min minutes between runs. Well with guys like Donovan Bailey, Oberdaley Thompson, Karim Street-Thompson, Bruny Surin, they would be pumping 18mmols of lactate at the end of that workout whereas a world class quarter miler at the end of the race is only pumping 10-11mmol. So lactate isn’t the enemy. Actually if you study the Krebs cycle lactate is very anabolic so we want lactate, we just want to control what days we get it, how much and what we do when it is in the blood stream. The better the power speed athlete the greater the amounts of lactate they can produce. I mean we have throwers on the Olympic platform and when they are done with the lifts they are pumping 12-14mmols of lactate and they haven’t run a step. Also on block workout days we then go to the Olympic platform and we setup curves of lactate infusion because one of the problems we have in sprinting, at the world class level, is four races in two days at the big championships and so there are huge slopes to these blood lactate levels.”

From:
http://www.down-right.co.uk/2008_08_01_archive.html

There are several things:

1. there are many ways (activities) to pump high lactate levels. What is the most specific for a sprinter : reps of 300m or reps of 30m? Thinks about the intensity (% of 1RM) for the two workouts. Like Charlie says, think in term of speed end special endurance.
2. at the end of a 400m race, the lactate level is around 10mmol/l, but the level raises up to 18mmol/l 12min later, then 30min after the race it is going down to about 10mmol/l. What does that say regarding the rest time for Special Endurance workouts?
3. there is a high corelation between lactate level and 400m result, but there are exceptions, like Koch. Lactate max level is not the sole issue, there is the rate of the slope, how fast does she clean her system. That’s why she was able to do that 6x300m workout in 36sec with 10min rest. However, her lactic tolerance was probably low, as she has never been able to run the last 100m of the 400m under 13sec (unlike girls like Kratochvilova, Bryzgina, Freeman, Szewinska or Sanya Richards). Does it make sense?