Lactate test

What better way to spend the evening of Valentine's day than to do a lactate test? As last time, the protocol involved running 4 series of a kilometer around the track at a prescribed pace. Rather than relying on a GPS watch, the trick was to make sure I passed a cone every time the watch "beeped". The first two kilometers were run at 14 kph (conservative Marathon pace) and the second two were run at 15 kph (ambitious Marathon pace). Even if the numbers don't mean a lot to you (they don't to me), it is interesting to see the improvement since the test I did just prior to running Valencia Marathon:

Pre Valencia (November 2011)
	Speed (kph)	Lactate (mmol/L)	Heart rate (bpm)
	14	1.7	155
	14	1.7	158
	15	2.7	167
	15	2.9	166
Pre Seville (February 2011)
	Speed (kph)	Lactate (mmol/L)	Heart rate (bpm)
	14	1.2	153
	14	1.4	149
	15	2.3	159
	15	2.2	160

Pre Getafe (January 2011)
	Speed (kph)	Lactate (mmol/L)	Heart rate (bpm)
	15	3.2	158
	15	2.2	159
	16	3.9	166
	16	4.4	170

 Just judging by my heart rate, there is a clear improvement: I ran the second set at 15 kph with virtually the same heart rate as the second set at 14 kph last time round. My lactate clearing abilities have also improved for what that's worth.

With all that, Jonathan reckons that I can aim for a pace somewhere between 4:05 and 4:10 per kilometer but that, in any case, I should keep a close eye on my heart rate.