How Important is Lactate?

From PhysFarm

So, you may now be asking yourself, “Why should we even worry about lactate?” The answer is, we shouldn’t! I encourage my athletes and students to stop thinking in terms of lactate. Everyone does it, because it is so easy to measure. However, as you can see, it is really just a very indirect market of some much more important / interesting stuff that is going on in the body, most of which is not easy to measure without expensive gear. From the perspective of the average (or even professional) athlete, it is simply important to realize that you don’t want to be crossing CP with any significant frequency or for any significant duration if you are expecting to do your best in a triathlon, particularly a long course triathlon.