I am incredibly guilty of letting my ego get in the way of running my actual threshold pace. It goes like this: I say that I’m running off of “feel”, start the threshold run with the best of intentions, begin thinking about the paces I’ve run before/what paces my competitors run/what paces I want to run, and I inevitably begin pushing the pace past that “comfortably hard” range. Not only do the splits look a little more flashy, but the feeling of pushing myself in a workout makes me think “That was so hard, but I did it. Surely going harder just makes me better.” Unfortunately that isn’t actually the case. The purpose of a lactate threshold workout is to ride the line where the body is producing and buffering lactate at the same rate. This trains the body to handle lactate and keep levels lower at progressively faster paces. However, when the pace is pushed past the actual lactate threshold, the fine line of threshold is crossed and this goal is not achieved. So don’t let the ego get in the way! Remember that faster isn’t always better and stick to true threshold pace. I made a video discussing this concept and testing my lactate threshold. Check it out if you’re interested in learning more.
