Lactic acid a positive player in exercise

Monica showing us the delicious tacos she is about to eat and enjoy. We had steak, chicken and pork. YUM!

Yesterday Curt and I attended an engagement for our good friends Monica and Malcolm at Monica’s parents’ house. There was beer and also a taco bar, which was so delicious. I had a couple of beer and more tacos than I want to admit to. But man, were they good!
 
Luckily I had a hardcore workout at the yoga studio yesterday. And today I did about an hour on the espinner with a Race Day workout. According to the espinner, I burned 790 calories and rode almost 20 miles. I am not sure how accurate the calorie burning is. I plan to do some research and a post soon on how accurate the exercise machines are in terms of calories burned.

Getting my spin bike ready for my Race Day workout.

The espinner instructor mentioned lactic acid today, which he has mentioned before.
Apparently there has been controversy over whether or not lactic acid causes energy or lack of energy.
This New York Times article explains it pretty well. This Scientific American article does an OK job explaining. But from what I understand, lactic acid does NOT cause muscle soreness. And here’s a Wikipedia link, which probably confused me the most. OK, this is a good article from About.com, which mentions lactic acid as a positive player in metabolism.
This is a good way to sum up my research from the About.com article, which was originally published in the Student Newsletter, Health and Wellness for the Exercise and Movement Science Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon, lactic acid is not a useless metabolic by-product. It can serve as a very important and useful energy source.