Wørd wrote:
Given that his specialty was the 50K you'd think he'd be a better marathoner than 10K runner. The guy must have had one hell of a lactate threshold. But again, even on the most aggressive diet he would have been unlikely to get under 150 lbs so world elite would have been a very long shot.
I would rather say that the 50k was his worst event. He took 7 individual golds, 2 of which was in the 50k (in Nagano he tired completely in the end of the race and only won by 8 seconds).
He took 19 individual medals, 5 of which was in the 50k.
You also have to remember that the physiology of skiing and running is completely different. A high Vo2max is the most important physiological factor, together with pure endurance in XC skiing. I was watching when Charlotte Kalla and Anders Södergren was doing a Vo2max test last September, and they both told me that the primary goal of the summer training was to elevate Vo2max as much as possible. In XC you don´t hold a fairly even intensity, like you do in running. A XC ski race, even a 50k, is more like a fartlek.