Endurance exercise performance: the physiology of champions

Efforts to understand human physiology through the study of champion athletes and record performances have been ongoing for about a century. For endurance sports three main factors--maximal oxygen consumption (.VO(2,max)), the so-called 'lactate threshold' and efficiency (i.e. the oxygen cost to generate a given running speed or cycling power output)--appear to play key roles in endurance performance. and lactate threshold interact to determine the 'performance .VO(2)' which is the oxygen consumption that can be sustained for a given period of time. Efficiency interacts with the performance .VO(2) to establish the speed or power that can be generated at this oxygen consumption. This review focuses on what is…