I know we probably have a Norwegian thread on here which I have not looked at
This article from a 13m 5K Norwegian is very good at explaining and telling a story of the double threshold days he would do
When I read the notes from the Norwegian cross country skier coach - he does not define what they mean by their high intensity. I might have to go and listen to the show to see if it’s in there. But here in this article - he is talking about his threshold in the base building area in terms of lactates and then in the specific preparation phase in terms of lactate as well.
Does anyone on here actually use lactate or just go out and RPE, power and HR and have fun?
from the article,
“It really took me a while to grow up,” he explains. “I was not a big guy. So my focus had to be about my technique. My grandfather and Rune (Sandøy, his first coach at local club Byasen) would be helping me in training, they’d make it fun to help develop me. We did so many different activities over the year to help my balance.
“Then, when I was 17, I finally started to grow. And that base meant it was easier for me to take big steps up the result list. I think it’s made a huge impact on today — I feel like balance and technique are one of my strengths. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for what we did when I was 15.”
I think xc skiing is massively dependent on good technique, like swimming. Adult-onset skiers, like swimmers, have it harder.
The largest sports in Norway are team sports. Not sure if you know a lot about Scandinavia. But the largest sport is football and then team handball. This is true for both gender.
The Olympics is good for big countries with many people. So it is strange that the USA, Canada, Germany are all underperform. The have the people, money, big companies, facilities, knowledge, etc.
Yeah, except there are three kinds of running events. Sprinting, middle distance and long distance. Inside those three different sports you need to count medals that an athlete can access. Probably the only runner who can span middle distance and long distance was Mo Farah . Mo ran a 3:28 1500m in the Diamond league in 2013 the year after he won 5000/10000m golds at London and on the women’s side Sifan Hasan (3:51 1500m at Doha World’s 2019, five years before) but even then she was not racing the 1500m and marathon in the same game for medals (I don’t think anyone ever has). At best She had access to three medals (5000/10000/marathon) which by any stretch is infinitely more impressive than Klaebo, because she competed against 4B women on the planet who have all run at some point in her life. Klaebo’s competiton at best is a few million men who actually had access to Nordic skiing in their lifetimes, so the pool of competitors is far less (as is the case for nearly every winter sport in the Olympics). Klaebo is a beast, there is no doubt, by nordic skiing, the way the physiology works, it is common for athletes to compete in all distances. This just does happen in running.
Even inside running it is almost never that one athlete who wins the 100m sprint, can win at the 400m (although I would have loved to see Bolt who started as a 400m guy against Wayde Van Niekerk in Rio still standing 43.03 world record). Michael Johnson’s 200/400 double in Atlanta to my recollection has not been replicated in 30 years. In my view (personal view) what Klaebo is doing is in a similar category to Johnson. He’s carrying his short distance speed/snap to an extreme length for his sport. Johnson just had access to two medals (three if you count 4x400), but it there was a 200m, 300m, 400m, and 4x200m, 4x400m relays suddenly Johnson has access to six golds.
A final complicating factor in running due to format of the sport, an athlete has to run in three rounds for each medal. The recovery penalty is massive.
It’s what makes Hassan’s performance in Paris in my view superior to Klaebo. She raced a deeper field globally and had to run 2x5000m (prelim and final) plus the 10,000m finals and marathon finals. She had to run 62km of racing in 9 days and that’s a running unicorn performance. Klaebo had less load bearing in his sport and had 14 days.
My main point is comparing number of gold medals is not really fair. Ice Hockey finals are on deck right now. 20 something gold medals will be given out to USA or Canada. Arguably the athletes in ice hockey worked just as hard or harder than the XC skiers (I played both sports, just did a 50km ski race last weekend…the work is hard and different and recovery between hockey games in a compressed schedule is brutal), yet, there will only be one gold and one silver in the tally. Skiing is more like swimming for recovery. You can just go on and on and on. Running is a completely different animal. Can’t even compare
Both Canada and the USA are competing in almost every event at the Olympics. Note true for the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Why are Canada and the USA underperforming? Skiing is a NCAA sport in the USA so the sport has a lot of money.
Fun fact. Emil Iversen who got gold in the relay and bronze in the 50k. When he was 15 his placement in the Boys 15 Norwegian championship was 218.
Hey Halvard, I can’t speak for US, but Nordic Skiing in terms of pecking order of where it falls into the Canadian sport landscape is a third or fourth tier sport. It’s just something people do for exercise like the elliptical trainer, it is not really of national interest in a sporting context, and I say that as someone who XC skis a lot.
The best athletes go to other sports. Literally the only kids who ski are kids of skiers. It is a tiny pool of athletes. It’s just the way it is. Many of our best athletes, finances, community engagement at a local level and national focus is in ice hockey. Also the athletic pool is spread between non Olympic sport, summer olympic sport and finally winter Olympic sport. Norway still does amazing for its population in the summer olympics, but also keep in mind that as far as rich countries go, Norway is in the super rich with GDP per capita almost 50 percent higher than Canada. It’s not that Canada is poor, it’s just that a massive swath of our population has barely any access to sport. It’s the same for all G7 countries, where large swath are shut out, versus poor countries where the majority are shut out (good on Norway for investing it’s oil wealth in a productive way in a diversified sovereign wealth fund…can’t say that about most countries including Canada). And sometimes, it’s a group of good athletes having bad luck or in the case of Whistler 2010, good athletes having good luck.
We also have a demographic shift in Canada over the last 20 years that is likely showing up now. Kids of new immigrants don’t do winter sport. They are playing summer sport and drawn to the big US team sports and soccer and that shows in our men’s and women’s national soccer team focus. It’s still not going to be at the level of major European soccer powers, but in the context of CONCACAF Canada is holding with a 4th place in the COPA America 2024. We are starting to see many of the best young athletes going to soccer. They are definitely not going to skiing of any kind because they just don’t have the $$$.
I think you have to hand it to overall Norwegian society regardless. If you add up winter and summer it’s way up there (I think 18 in Paris 2024 and 1st in the winter)
Because they aren’t. You guys are out performing, and by a lot. For a country that is the size of just two of our “cities”, your winter and summer olympic results are astounding. Certainly it has to do with your much healthier culture, but also a long history of just being plain competitive. You always have heroes to show the next generations, much like the Kenyans were/are in distance running.
You have every right to be proud, not sure why anyone would argue with results that span many, many decades…
This is a great piece, thanks for posting. I had read Bakken’s earlier piece that he links to titled “The Norwegian Method Revisited.” In that earlier piece he doesn’t get into specific lactate values like he does in the one you linked. One thing stood out: “I soon found out that lowering the lactate level from the standard level of 4.0 mmol/l down initially to below 3.0 – usually staying from 2.3 up to 3.0 on sessions gave not only far better results, you could also do huge amounts of “threshold training” – substantially more versus a level of close to 4.0, without wearing down.”
This is exactly what Arild Tveiten was talking about on a recent podcast interview (Mad Science in Real Life w/ Alan Couzens and Inaki de la Parra - Spotify – Web Player ). I had heard him talk about lactate before on other pods, but don’t remember this seemingly important piece. A lactate value of 2.3 - 3.0 likely represents a way different RPE than 4.0 for most people.
I did purchase a lactate meter when I got back into tri a couple years ago. Did I need it? No. Has it made me a better athlete? Maybe? Do I find it interesting to learn protocols and observe results? Definitely. Mostly use it on the bike trainer, have watched my basic lactate profile gradually shift to the right and support observations from power/HR/RPE. Use it occasionally while running. Never used it swimming.
Yes, he roller-skis in PC - here is the strava segment with his KOM from the UDOT winter road closure gate up to guardsman pass summit, 15-20% for much of it.
This is another thread from another website about Dr Ferrari where he recommends a lot of his Medio - which is in the range of 2.0 - 3.0 - to build up the fitness
Also the 2.3 - 3.0 threshold work is in the off season phase. They do try to do some spicier work in season as well.
But I find at times when I do a lot of my easier work but bring the training up, I am a bit less smashed overall and its not that far away from my very fastest times. Dont have a LM so I dont know what my lactates are
I am tempted to learn more about this but at the same time do not want to over complicate or academicise something that is just my past time.
I love Klaebo, but he’s not winning as much if Bolshunov isn’t banned because of the Ukraine war. Klaebo would still win a lot, especially the sprints, but he wouldn’t win everything like he has been.
Klaebo is a fantastic athlete. But let’s be realistic - by world standards cross country ski racing (and every winter Olympic sport) is a niche sport. It is a huge sport in Norway and Sweden and almost nowhere else. If the sport was like running with mass participation in huge countries like Japan or the US there would be no Klaebo winning sprints to the 50k. The competitive fields would be too deep and athletes would be forced to specialize. Hassan’s 5,000 to marathon is not comparable. If she had done the 1,500 maybe.
Most experts disagree. Klaebo still likely goes 6 for 6. They were evenly matched in 2021/22 in non-sprints. Since then Klaebo has significantly improved his endurance and was never beatable in the sprint.