Lactic acid / Bicarbonate loading
Diane Wynne
bicarbonate loading.
Has anyone had any experience of this (good or bad) ?
--
Diane Wynne
IMUK98 13:30
"You are only limited by your imagination"
Mick O'Connor
My master's degree mentor at the University of Pittsburgh did some research
on that before I went to school there. To make a long story short...he told
me some real horror stories. Although the bicarbonate solution will help to
buffer lactate somewhat there is an (extremely) fine line between too
little, just right and too much. Too little will have no effect, just right
will help somewhat but the significance in terms of performance is minimal
(besides you would have to keep a steady flow of bicarbonate in your system
to continually buffer the lactate) and finally too much and you will be in
for a GI system malfunction the likes of which few people ever see. As I
recall, my professor at Pitt said something about being in the toilet for
extended periods of time before they achieved the proper levels of
bicarbonate in the solution (he was, unfortunately, more descriptive than I
have to be here). Do some research, be careful and for Pete's sake don't
experiment with this on a race day!
Mick O.
MDSisson
>Diane Wynne wrote:
>
>> Just read in the UK version of Triathlete magazine about lactic acid and
>> bicarbonate loading.
>> Has anyone had any experience of this (good or bad) ?
>> --
From what I have read, this might work best if you're going to the track to do
repeats 800's, but that's about it. In that case, you create a quick rise in
lactic acid and can use Bicarbs to buffer quickly and "recover" enough to
repeat the hard effort again maybe a little sooner. There doesn't appear (to my
thinking, anyway) to be a practical application of this in long distance
racing. When you race long, you typically want to stay below your lactate
threshold for as long as you can - not at or above it. True, you may exceed the
threshold for short periods in hill climbs or sprints, but those always require
some "coasting" or backing off to allow recovery. Even more to the point, the
thing you want to do in training is to adapt your own "onboard" buffering
systems to handle increases in lactate production (that is, improve your
"lactate tolerance" by doing intervals). If you started relying on an external
mechanism such as bicarbonate loading (if, in fact, it did work) you'd
probably be shortchanging your own ability to buffer lactate (because if you
take away the specific stress, the buffering adaptation likely won't occur). In
that case, you might find yourself dependent on an external supply rather than
on your own ability to deal with it. In my estimation, lactate buffering is
probably not worth the effort in endurance training.
>
Mark Sisson