I think this is a good point, a lot of the studies look at athletes who might compete primarily in events which are 30-60 minutes or less.

They require a pretty high VO2 a low BL at threshold but at the same time a relatively high BL capacity at the end.

Cross country skiers, 5-10km track runners some cyclists etc require a good kick or sprint at the end, but it is less important if you don't have the threshold ability to stay at the front to begin with.

I was curious as well because a lot of our specific stuff during the last 12 weeks to ironman is right up the middle, for age groupers (for us) it also coincides with some of the highest volume in the year. And it is different with all three sports and the year over year volume that athletes can handle. For example on the run I think a lot of athletes would benefit from simply a 100% to 0% polarization until they can handle a certain amount of weekly volume - and have close to optimized body weight (barry P or some version of volume with frequency)

An interesting quote from Canova (he's referring to his specific period) :

"In the middle and long distances, the specifity is a specifity of extension. So, the philosophy of training for every event of this sector is to extend the capacity to last at a fixed speed, specific for the performance that you want to build.

In this type of philosophy, every event is an event of speed (because always the winner is the athlete who is 'faster' at the end of the competition), but most of the training is training of power - endurance (where 'Power' is the speed that every athlete is able to maintain for about 3/4 of the distance, and 'Endurance' is the training to maintain, at the same speed, the full competition distance). "

Maurice