Lactic Acid

Having blood taken from my ear during my lactate threshold test.


Ted racing in Boise.


The cats love the Christmas tree.

We had a good, although short, trip to Boise. Corey Hart, who has worked with Kristin Armstrong, Tina Pic, and Kimberly Baldwin, among others, did the lactate threshold testing. My results ended up okay, but not as high as I had hoped. Corey said I am currently a bit lower than most of the female U.S. domestiques, which made me disappointed at first, but then I realized that I really have not been training all that much over the past 6 weeks, so I am definitely lower than I will be after some good training. We will have the opportunity to have the testing done again in a couple months to measure improvement. Ted didn't feel great for his race yesterday, but he did say he had fun and liked the course.

Corey said we'll have to get Ted tested too the next time we go down. If you have never had a lactate threshold test done, it's not a lot of fun. You start out riding at a steady pace on a trainer. Every 3 minutes, they add resistance to the trainer to increase the difficulty, ask you to rate your perceived exertion, and take blood from your ear (or finger). They measure the lactic acid in your blood each time to measure how well your body is able to utilize it. Everyone reaches a point where they can no longer utilize the lactic acid produced by the body; the goal is to get this level as high as possible. You basically ride until you cannot turn the pedals over anymore. The whole test only takes a matter of minutes.

We have another short week here, as we leave Thursday to go to Kansas for cyclocross nationals. Lots to get done in the next few days!