Traditionally blood lactate levels during exercise have been strongly associated with endurance capacity (Hering, 2018). However, over the last decades understanding of its kinetics and importance has changed dramatically (Faude, 2009). Since it has generally been acknowledged that lactate represents an important metabolic intermediate connecting aerobic and anaerobic energy generation (Brooks and Gladden, 2003; Gladden, 2004; Brooks, 2014b -> s. Hering, 2018), growing interest was spent to determine the highest constant workload that still leads to an equilibrium between lactate production and lactate elimination (Billat et al., 2003; Faude et al., 2009), i. e. the so-called maximal lactate steady state (MLSS) first proposed by Heck (1985 -> s. Hering, 2018). However, since the gold standard in MLSS determination (Heck 1985 & Faude, 2009) is time-consuming and thus difficult to integrate in athletes` training schedules (Hering, 2018), most of the numerous test protocols only use arbitrary or empirically derived criteria to estimate the MLSS within graded exercise tests (Wahl, 2017). Therefore, Dotan (2012) introduced the so-called reverse lactate threshold test (RLT) as a concept based on the physiological mechanism of lactate formation and elimination. Shortly, the RLT consists of a “lactate priming segment”, which is intended to raise lactate concentration above steady state values, and a “reverse segment”, in which intensity is gradually decreased, in order to determine the point at that lactate clearance firstly exceeds lactate formation again (Dotan, 2012 & Wahl, 2017). Although Dotan (2012) as well as Wahl (2017) showed a high correlation between the RLT and the MLSS in athletes from various disciplines, to the best of our knowledge, the RLT has not been evaluated in a field test setting so far. Furthermore, both named authors admit that a major difficulty of the RLT design remains estimating MLSS in advance to determine intensities of the single grades. Therefore, the aim of this study was to implement the RLT in a field test setting with sport students and to investigate whether the average running speed (v5000) in a 5000-meter all-out trial would be appropriate to determine the highest intensity during the RLT priming segment. Additionally, we examined the accuracy of the RLT by comparing it with the the gold standard test, measured heart rate (HR) and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) as potential non-invasive steady-state determination methods, and observed fundamental biomechanical parameters to investigate stride pattern changes with altered load.