High baseline lactate level

Physiology
1

Hello,
I measure with consistency high resting and Z1 lactate level around 2mmol/L.
Typically, looking for LT1 (with VT1 estimated at 126bpm, 125w during a VO2Max in Jan 2023), I started the test at 80w and did 10’ steps, 10 watt increase. Before starting, lactate is 2.2mmol/L, and then dropped and stayed around 1.8 until I reached 130w step and stopped at 2.6mmol.
I wasn’t expecting something values below 1mmol at rest or Z1 based on my readings. How does this sound to you and can be interpreted? Is that something I should investigate or work on? Or just consider it as my physiological baseline and don’t worry about it?
Thanks for your feedback :slight_smile:

2

I’m far from expert, i’ve done some 30 tests on myself. What i’ve come to understand thus far:

  1. Diet before test. If testing just up into LT1 it might be good idea to be done fasted. High carb diet can raise lactate levels, if i recall correctly.
  2. Endurance base, high level endurance athletes do have much lower lactate values at rest than so-called normal people. But your lactate dips, which is supposed to be one sign of good endurance base.
  3. 2.2mmol/L is with-in normal limits, on upper threshold but still with-in normal range.

But i have to put emphasis on the fact that i’m quite the novice when it comes to lactate testing.

1 Like
3

Do you have the actual data from the test, power, hr and lactate for each step? or a fit file for the power and heart rate and then send the lactate numbers?

you can email them to steve at stevenealperformance dot com

1 Like
4

Hi @steveneal, yep I will share that by mail over the weekend. Thanks!

5

@steveneal I had a similar question. I just did a lactate test to help a teammate with his student’s research. My resting was 2.0, and I was 2.0 up to around 162 BPM then it started to increase. I’m not as fit as I was a few years ago, but I still did 400+ hours the last few years and did 42 hours in January, so I’m not sedentary either.

My main question was that I had been doing Z2 work below 137 BPM, but this is suggesting my Z2 goes to 160ish?

6

@alexis24 what email did you use to send your data from?

7

@thom2544 can you please send all the data you have to my email steve at stevenealperormance dot com

I can’t seem to find anything in a search in my email thanks.