Andrew Newell gets his finger pricked by Coach Chris Grover.  We train by zones defined by lactate levels, heart rate, feel and preceived exertion as well as preceived pace.

The crew at the top of their interval hill.  Winning the workout is not getting to the top of the hill first - it is going the prescribed pace to accomplish the specific goal of the workout.

Kris Freeman can ski the correct pace and so can you - but do you have the discipline?

Kikkan Randall at the top of her slightly longer, slightly slower paced interval.  UofU coach Brown helps out on the lactate testing.  Kikkan was on pace for the workout prescribed to her by APU coach Jim Galanes.

Different programs use different zones.  We use a wide varitey of zones for different workouts to accomplish specific things.

In general this time of year we are aiming for very low lactates on our distance sessions.  For us this feels "very easy, and you can easily talk."  Our goal is to produce less than 1mmol of lactate.  The heart rate zone corresponding to this feel and lactate is highly individual and changes with training.

A workout which focuses on pace is one our sprinters have been doing and that is several sets of 6 x 30 second intervals at "sprint race pace."  That is an interval of 30 seconds done at a pace that can be sustained for around 3minutes.  Though this workout is "pace-based" the athletes should get around 6 to 8mmol of lactate and more means they are not being realistic with their race pace.

These are only a few workouts but you can see how we use lactate in conjunction with other markers to determine the pace of our workouts.

(all photos by Kevin Sweeney of Swix USA.  Thanks for the help in the workout Kevin and thanks for the great shots.)