Physiological determinants of race walking performance in female race walkers.
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between race pace on a 5 km walking performance and velocity at the lactate threshold (V-LT), VO2 at the lactate threshold (VO2-LT), velocity at which blood lactate corresponded to 4 mM level (V-OBLA), VO2 at which blood lactate corresponded to 4 mM level (VO2-OBLA), walking economy (steady state VO2 at a standard velocity) and maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) in eight female race walkers. A multiple stepwise linear regression analysis was employed to predict the race pace on a 5 km walking performance as dependent variable. Since V-OBLA was highly correlated to 5 km race walking performance (r = 0.94, P less than 0.001), it was selected as the first predictor. When VO2max was added to V-OBLA as the second predictor the predictive accuracy increased significantly, but multiple R did not increase significantly by adding variables of walking economy or other parameters as independent variance. As a result, the combination of V-OBLA and VO2max as independent variables accounted for the greatest amount of total variance (97 per cent). It is suggested that blood lactate variable such as V-OBLA can account for a large portion of the variance in race pace on a 5 km walking performance.
Yoshida
T
T
Exercise Physiology Laboratory, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, Osaka University, Japan.
Udo
M
M
Iwai
K
K
Muraoka
I
I
Tamaki
K
K
Yamaguchi
T
T
Chida
M
M
D000328:Adult; D005080:Exercise Test; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007773:Lactates / Q000097:blood*; D019344:Lactic Acid; D008124:Locomotion; D010101:Oxygen Consumption / Q000502:physiology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013177:Sports
D007773:Lactates; D019344:Lactic Acid