That study, which was led by Noakes’s student Fernando Beltrami, used a similar “reverse” protocol that started fast and gradually slowed down just enough to enable the subjects to stay on the treadmill as they tired. One of the curious details of Beltrami’s study was that, when the subjects returned to the lab for a follow-up test using the conventional accelerating VO2max protocol, their values stayed at the new, higher value.7 To Beltrami, who also coaches runners, this suggests that the mere fact of having attained the higher level of oxygen consumption somehow adjusts the brain’s
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