World Class Nordic skier wins NC 10000 in trainers (during base training season)!

John Clendon wrote:

Facts please. Finland is not the same as Norwegian. The Finns have been caught over and over for PEDs. Norwegians, much more scarce. Though, Ole Einar Bjorndalen gives reason to suspect use.

The Swedes and Finns may have been aided by blood doping but by the mid 90s the Norwegians managed to claw back their advantage with superior waxing and higher cadence

Invesitgative Swedish news programme "Uppdrag Granskning" (mission to investigate) has obtained longitudinal blood data of cross country skiers.

-The data is 5 000 datapoints collected during the first decade in the millenium. It consists of individual Hematocrit, HB and Ret levels from blood samples.

- The conclusion is on an aggregate level that the data shows indication of blood manipulation. Blood profiles show sharp highs during championships and low scores during off seasing. A female athlete (can't remember who it was) had HB of 11.7 off score and 16.8 before a major competion.

- Nations that had suspiciously high blood values in the data were Norway, Finland, Estonia, Germany and Russia. One Swedish athlete is mentioned too, more on that later.

-Interview experts which have reviewed the data are Professor Don Caitlin (UCLA), Professor Perikles Simon ( Wada) and Professor Alessandro Donati

- A lof of skiers were under suspicion but couldn't be caught at the time (2005-2006) because their Hematocrit level was easily changed by saline drips. XC-skiing has a no start rule if skiers hematocrit value is above 50%.

- Test for EPO were crude during 2005-2006, and skiers had learned to lower their glow time through injection directly into the vein.

- After the Finnish doping scandal in 2001 several athlete were under suspicion and FIS spent 500 000 SEK alone trying to catch Finnish skiiers between 2002 and before 2006 Olympics in Torino.

- As a consequence of poor outcome in getting dopers caught. Suspicious skiers were targeted and put up on a special list after the Olympics in Torino.

- 12 men and 7 women were put on the list. These athletes had abnormal blood values over a long period of time. Named names among those on the list were Anders Aukland (Norway), Jan Maek (Estonia) and biathlete Anna-Karin Zidek (Sweden). The latter commented her blood values with that she has a condition (iirc over production of iron in her blood) that makes her blood values high. The other two provided with non-comments.

- Other names mentioned are Kaisa Varis (Finland) she was caught for doping later, but she was on the targeted list. As a result of re-testing samples from 2006 Kristina Smigun-Vähi (Estonia) showed an adverse finding.

- Norway will follow next

- As a result of the revious programme "Blodracet" (The Blood race) which covered the extreme blood values during the 90's. The Norwegian ski federation presented off-score blood values as an explanation for the high values in the programme by Swedish televison. Not surprisingly off-score values were low and normal. The explanation given by the federation why they didn't provide values during competion was that they did not bother to haul lab equipment to races and test their athletes.

- Otherwise it was No comment, no comment and no comment from the Norwegian federation why their athletes had high blood values during 2000-2007. And yes no comment again from the Norwegian federation. Finally, the reporters made an unannounced visit to the Norwegian ski federaton and they were met by a arrogant media representative - yes no comment this time either.

It surprised me how much the antidoping hunters knew within FIS about which athletes did dope and not being able to catch the cheaters. The explanation that was given was at the time tests were crude.

A link to the programme:

http://www.svtplay.se/video/1849884/uppdrag-granskning

Might be geo restricted

Not_The_Real_XFit_Guy wrote:

- The skier spends the spring and summer building a cardiovascular and muscular base involving mostly long slow distance (running and roller skiing) and weight workouts. Intensity sessions (natural intervals) are gradually introduced as the summer progresses. First once a week then twice a week. Ninety per cent of the training hours are

easy whereas 5-10% is done at or above race pace.

with the occasional national track championship thrown in... ;)

My impression is that most programs use this sort of Lydiard approach. I'm guessing though that XC skiing has similar debates over quality v quantity as running for different distances -- and stoermer steira is certainly a long-distance specialist. But the Norwegians and Swedes do seem to include a fair amount of racing in their so-called off-season -- e.g., a roller-skiing race series (that can draw up to 50,000 spectators), hill climbing races, etc. It isn'ta great oddity that an elite Norwegian skier might sign up for a track race.

Huh?! wrote:

firsttimeonthisputer wrote:

Nordic skiing base training is very similar to crossfit with lots of heavy lifts, and no slow jogging.

Not at all true. They do a lot of volume, 2x as much as runners, and a lot is at easy L1-L2 effort. They can do a lot of quality work but the principles of training are quite similar to running.

If you want to know how Norwegian XC skiers train, here is information for you.

This is how Americans train

http://smsxc.blogspot.com/?m=1

I figured it was Jason Rexing making a return.

luv2run wrote:

Huh?! wrote:

Not at all true. They do a lot of volume, 2x as much as runners, and a lot is at easy L1-L2 effort. They can do a lot of quality work but the principles of training are quite similar to running.

If you want to know how Norwegian XC skiers train, here is information for you.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0101796

94% aerobic. Thanks.

wannanorski? wrote:

loaded wrote:

Loads of running in the off season for most of them.

Running is important, I think, but lots of aerobic/anaerobic training at L3/L4 with various activities -- roller skiing, cycling (mountain & road), hill bounding w/ poles, etc. -- in addition to running. For elites, throw in a two-week camp to a glacier somewhere during summer to get on skis and build base and work on technique. Lots of core work, too, with functional strength training probably at least twice a week. During base period, someone like stoermer steira is probably working out between 25 or 30 hours a week.

The percentage of intensity to volume is relatively the same among a spectrum of endurance athletes. See review by Seiler, (2010) international journal of sports phys and performance, 5:276-291.

Most programs do about 80% aerobic, 10% LT, and 10% intensity. (+\-5)This trends across running cycling rowing and XC skiing.

Three pages of XC skiing thread, and nobody has mentioned Ben True? He was an All-American at NCAA XC Skiing