Olympic champion Niels Van Der Pool training program (It is crazy :-) )

On the high school forum, there is a tread about the latest hs girl success story and her training. 4 days a week of running, 4 to 6 miles per day followed by elliptical, 20/30 total running miles. Rest of the week elliptical. Dan king uses the elliptical and bike extensively. Perhaps some respond differently to cross training?

and again...i am not suggesting you replace runs with rides. most people have a physical limit to mileage they can run in an aerobic phase. for some people that is only 10 hours. they are breaking down physically, but their cardiovascular/neurological systems are not. theoretically the benefit would also be there in durable runners because as they transition to the threshold phase they can now stress their cardiovascular system to a greater extent by completing longer or more frequent threshold sessions because the extra hours of cross training has built their aerobic base to levels that could not be achieved by running only. the equation then becomes simple, more time at threshold = faster races. training of course does not follow a one size fits all approach, but would be interesting to see pro runners take something away from how other world class athletes train.

"If that was the case then the best runners on the planet would be the triathletes - and they are not."

Triathletes train to bike after an hard swim and run their best off of bike legs. Not many try to peak for just a running race. Adding crosstraining away from competition maintaining the primary focus of running is a different proposition. In the document the author state how sad he was an injury kept him from running more (ultra running at that). An activity quite far from the specific action of skating 10ks.

Epilogue

"The hardest thing about this program was getting through it with a smile upon my face. When I found ways to enjoy it I was unstoppable. Sometimes, to get through more hours, what was needed was an ice cream and sometimes it was multiple ice creams. The good news was that ice cream was pretty cheap. So even though other skaters had millions of euros going into their careers, I was able to skate faster than all of them, because I had found a way to enhance my performance with ice cream. To me the challenge was not about suffering, but finding a way to endure hardships with ease.

I hope that what I’ve written here will contribute to my records being broken. If you were to engage in elite sports please remember: it’s about winning, but it is not solely about winning. All but one is obliged to lose. Under such circumstances I consider success to be measured by means of playing, and not by margin of winning. It is the strive for excellence, the sharing of love and the ability to inspire others to do the same, that to me above all, defines an athlete's success. The job is to lead the way by leading yourself.

Be courageous. Do not overtrain, but stick to the Limit."-Nils van der Poel

Yes I found that interesting too, but judging by his actions instead of his words he believed sub threshold to be superior. And judging by his results it was very effective. Next year if he tries 4+ mmol then breaks his WR again he can confirm it. Until then, sub threshold appears to be superior

Great points being made and reiterated. I have personally seen the huge rewards of cross training and am dumb founded that it’s not more utilized amongst the top level, elite runners. I think it’s these wise tales we hear about it ruining your form or that you will turn into a triathlete ;)

In all seriousness, the aerobic abilities can be improved significantly from a higher volume of training obviously but except for a handful of biomechanical anomalies most of us can not maximize that with running alone. Cycling / elliptical can allow you to add in more volume and even pull from an additional pool of muscle fibers to build additional mitochondria.

I think the key is in periodizing the use and implementation. this athlete is doing plenty of specific training as he nears the competition and that training is also more the more intense sessions to prepare one to race well and maximize performance from the aerobic capacity built from hours an hours of long steady distance (but just not skating). 

anyone who has read olbrecht and his work on swimming training will be familiar with the idea of first maximing aerobic capacity, and he argues that a swimmer should use additional strokes than just what they might race for developing aerobic capacity. Then, as one nears their peak performance, one will shift to focusing on aerobic power and this should be done with the specific stroke for a given performance. It’s similar here, and you use the training easier on the body to do more aerobic training. Then to translate that to race performance (aerobic power), focus on race specificity.

Someone brought up Ritz, and  I think we can all agree that while he was injury prone, he still achieved what was once seen as unthinkable amongst American distance runners. Listen to him talk about his career and these accomplishments, and it’s clear that he  often was following this process (albeit begrudgingly at the mercy of overcoming one injury after the next). Ritz would get hurt and then cross train like a man possessed on the bike and elliptical. From the sounds of it, he was doing hours of high end aerobic training that would not have been possible if he was just running. Then, once he was back healthy, he could get back to run specific training and only need a few weeks of running to run some incredible performances.

Perhaps this is just utter blasphemy and heretical to say but what if that is why he ran such incredible performances. What if he could not have developed his aerobic system to the sam extent if he was always healthy and just running? If he was doing 20+  hours of high end aerobic training when injured, that would be at least double the total aerobic training he would have done just running alone. Plus, the run training would have been far less “high end”. This is not to say the running performances were achieved with the cross training alone, but maybe if you could utilize this low impact training and really get after it while still sprinkling in some running, you can then launch into a 6-12 week race specific phase, focused on running at a level that you couldn’t have otherwise achieved?

I can speak from experience that my best running came after a 3-6 month period of being unable to run much due to injury. I training twice per day on the bike / elliptical at a steady clip along with two super intense sessions per week doing 15ish hours per week, and then I transitioned to doing 50 - 60ish miles per week and two intense running workouts  each week and ran PRs from the mile to the half marathon over that summer. It worked.

There is no substitute for the run specific training, and I would not have been able to have much to show for my fitness before a few weeks of consistent running but that’s all it took, just a few weeks.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of truth to this. I've made incredible progress myself just by increasing the running volume (and then getting race fit by doing more workouts). Clearly you get better at running by running more, but at some point (probably different for everyone) it's hard to fit in more running without getting injured/overtrained etc, so adding cross training might be the way to go!

(I have a young family so my time is the biggest constraint, I "only" run 90-100mpw so I doubt that replacing those runs with cross-training would be more effective).

A Dutch runner (Michel Butter) has retired from the sport and replaced most of his running with long bike rides, and surprisingly ran an OQ.

Kilian Jornet (and many other trail runners) replace running with cross-country skiing in the winter. I can't quickly find by how much, but iirc he doesn't run for months on end? (I might remember this wrong).

Yeah the thing about both speed skating and cycling is both are zero impact sports. You can build your aerobic base without destroying your body. Running is a high impact sport so runners need more recovery -- they do gym work and easy runs. Cycling and swimming are not ideal for runners because they use different muscles. Doing those sports might even be detrimental to running if you develop that aren't of much use in running. Swimmers, for example, have big upper bodies.

Recently heard Nils mention on a Swedish podcast that he thinks he's the worlds slowest runner for the volume he runs. He runs about 90-120 miles a week with a PB of around 38m for 10km.

The evidence is all around us, isn't it?

Simi Hamilton, the recently retired former top American cross country skier is a insanely strong mountain biker who did a ton of his training on the MTB. He's insanely strong, on both uphills and downhills, now as an amatuer.

Simi is one of the most versatile athletes out there. He was at a level in college to likely go pro xc skier, mountain biker, climber, kayaker, runner and possibly alpine skier.  Next level.

Sepp Kuss opens 2022 season with a cross-country skiing race - VeloNews.com

Yes, good, but he s been 200 km rides this week so..

I am shocked at this guys mental fortitude. Outside of the 'fun' events he does in his aerobic phase he does 3 differrent workouts the WHOLE YEAR!!

1. Long 5-6h ride at ~ 3W/kg (assuming 85kg in base)

2. Long 5-6h ride with 10-30m intervals at 4.8-5W/kg (80-85kg)

3. His specific ice session that is just laps at goal pace.

WTF. I've never heard of such a monotonous training plan.

You US-guys would say "There is more than one way to skin a cat" :) Right?

It's remarkable. What if Cheptegei's competition season training plan was just run 16X 61-63s 400s 5 days week for 2-3 months? That's effectively what Niel's specific workout is. Short Intervals at WR pace.

That is literally Coach JR's approach.

There is no competitive pro runner who does the same workout every day for weeks before racing. With not even a minor variation.

You mix up here bike with elliptical. Two different sports. Abviously the elliptical transfers better to running, as more muscle groups are overlapping with running. Its all about peripheral adaption. Mitochondria, caplillaries, enregy depots, and so on has to be grow in the muscle group required for running. Use it or lose it. Mitochondria which are not used decrease in volume and vice versa.