Zitat von Lord kinbote on letsrun

Similar question: If the Sun and all the stars aren't really revolving about a stationary Earth, why did the ancients rely on the motions of the Sun and stars (relative to the Earth) to help them with agriculture?

Answer: Their conceptual model wasn't entirely accurate, but their results were exactly the same as they would have been with today's model, since practical (and amazingly accurate) calculations for timekeeping and for the cycles of seasons - based on many generations of real-world observation, mind you - were the guidelines they followed. Their limited (or total lack of) understanding of the mechanics of the solar system and of the universe in general didn't render the measurements which affected their lives any less accurate.

As with farming, it's practicality that takes center stage in running. Finding a single physical process which pinpoints the exact "threshold" may be an exercise in futitily, but that doesn't matter in the workaday world of running. Whether or not there is a distinct LT, lactate levels do rise with increasing exercise intensity, and correctly executed "tempo" runs will improve your ability to process that lactate for use in energy production, reduce the negative effects of the associated positive ions (or whatever the fudge it is that creates fatigue), accumulate more time in a steady state of unbroken rhythm and harmony, and provide a host of other benefits that you will only come to learn and appreciate when you do enough running.

So if Noakes wants to call some hitherto unidentified exercise gremlin "Central Governor," let him. They might have thought it was strictly a lactate accumulation issue in Ye Olde Days (ah, I shall slay the evil lactate monster - I call him "Lactor"), but it doesn't change the effectiveness of "threshold" running (or the way you should approach it or how often you should use it) one iota.

They might have called the Earth the center of everything and the Sun a "god" a few thousand years ago, while today they see gravity as a property of how matter acts on space, which produces all those celestial motions we see. But none of those motions are changed by our (still limited) understanding of what is behind them. The ancients could have believed the Sun to be a huge flaming booger that got flicked off the end of the finger of some giant nosepicking nerd, who was lurking beneath the horizon of the flat Earth, to blaze a slow path across the sky every new day, and that theory wouldn't have made their tedious calculations of its motions (and the practical application to farming techniques) any less accurate or effective.