Comment by wallflower
10 years ago
> This meshes perfectly with the general view of endurance athletes that performance is largely mental.
Most elite endurance athletes do not hit the lactic threshold during their actual races. That is why they train so much - to build their endurance. Once you hit the lactic threshold, your body starts to break down.
Enduramce athletes go just bellow lactic threshold most of the time. The body is OK to go above threshold, but only for a limited time. The key is to correctly time usage of that above-threshold capability.
I race MTB. Both quick races and long, 100 miles or even 24h solo events. In a quick <3h race, I just go all-out and stay above threshold most of the time. But I try to time my above-threshold usage in long races. In one of the 24h races, the course had a single climb. I was riding everything but that climb bellow threshold. It would have been very hard to stay bellow threshold on it. While it was just a couple minutes effort above threshold.