The serious athlete is neglected. A simple guide to "How to Run Your First 5K!" will always outsell an essential-but-dense tome like *The Lore of Running*. But training to survive short-term participation does little to maximize long-term performance.
Intensity Can a three-hour run reveal aerobic threshold? "Is it crude to use the average heart rate from a 3-hour run to roughly guesstimate aerobic threshold (AeT)?"
Lactate Testing What is your preferred method of testing anaerobic threshold? "I have been getting frustrated using AeT and thought I was just doing something wrong/not reading the data correctly... If not aerobic threshold, what is your preferred method of testing anaerobic threshold?"
Lactate Testing Detraining: How far can you fall? Over three years of detraining, my anaerobic and aerobic threshold speeds have declined 23% and 26%, respectively. At a climb rate of 1,000 meters per hour, my heart rate has increased 37%. Detraining, age, altitude—and attitude—are all factors.
Skimo Racing What can you learn from a post-race postmortem? Should you warm up if you're "only in recreation mode"? Is it worth pushing to avoid bottlenecks? How do you eat when using poles?
Nutrition When can you get away with not carrying extra food and water? Nutrition confusion often comes from guides and plans being labeled "...for Event X." But duration and intensity are the key factors, not distance.
Aerobic Capacity For how long can aerobic capacity improve? "I've read that aerobic capacity building can go on for 6, 8 or 10 years, even for full-time athletes. And I recently read how Nils van der Poel spent ~30 hours/week for 3 years in building his aerobic base."
Intensity How does cooling down improve aerobic capacity? "What is the reason for cooling down after a workout? What are the consequences if we never cool down? Does the kind of workout matter? What does the ideal cool down look like?"
Intensity What metabolic information can we get from a flat half-marathon? "I've read that a time trial for 10k or 45 min or 1 hr is a general test for one's anaerobic threshold, and a marathon is raced at one's aerobic threshold. Is that true?"
Skimo Racing Skimo Transitions: The DOUBLE RIP in 10 seconds After the final ascent, the change from skinning to skiing is unique. Instead of two single-skin rips, it's much faster to double-rip both skins and stuff the sticky mess in your suit.
Skimo Racing Skimo Transitions: From BOOT TO SKIN in 10 seconds Bootpack sections, especially in the sprint event, often end with more skinning. Transitioning from booting to skinning is the shortest transition and often only takes a few seconds.
Skimo Racing Skimo Transitions: From SKIN TO BOOT in 10 seconds Many races have a steep bootpack section. Bootpacks are too steep to skin, so the racer must switch from skinning to booting. Bootpack transitions are usually the shortest in a skimo race.
Skimo Racing Featured Skimo Transitions: From SKI TO SKIN in 30 seconds At the bottom of each descent, a skimo racer must switch from downhill skiing to uphill skinning and do it in less than a minute to be competitive. This "ski-to-skin" transition is a key skill in skimo racing. Mastering it is a must. Doing it in less than
Skimo Racing Featured Skimo Transitions: From SKIN TO SKI in 20 seconds At the top of each climb, a skimo racer must switch from uphill skinning to downhill skiing and do it in less than 30 seconds to be competitive. The "skin-to-ski" transition is a key skill in skimo racing. Mastering it is a must.
Do we have an effort bias? In January, I started using Anki [https://apps.ankiweb.net/], spaced repetition software, to study for an exam. My first impression was negative. "This is too easy," I thought. "This can't be helpful." But as I read more about spaced repetition [https://en.wikipedia.
How I estimate goal times If you run all out for 10 kilometers in 30 minutes, does that mean that you can run all out for 20 kilometers in 60 minutes? No, but there is a way to make a decent estimate of a goal time.
How much of your training is bioavailable? "More is better" is almost never the case. Like nutrients, the body can only absorb what it can absorb. Anything more than that dose is wasted or, worse, counterproductive.
The Basics of Basic Training Principles To maximize performance, an athlete needs to do some anaerobic training. But to optimize the anaerobic benefits, an athlete needs to have an aerobic foundation. The bigger the base, the bigger the benefit. The bigger the benefit, the better the performance.
Does arduous exercise compromise immunity? Originally published at Uphill Athlete in July 2020. A recent article solicited opposing expert arguments about exercise and immunity. The researchers wanted to know whether “arduous exercise” compromises immune function. But for practicing athletes, the answer doesn’t matter. And it could be detrimental to know for sure. The important
What is aerobic evolution? Many athletes get suckered into believing that physical potential is a genetic lottery. That's only partially true.
Does more fatigue mean more fitness? Training causes fatigue and fitness to appear in sequence. Then athletes confuse the degree of fatigue with future fitness. Sometimes, it’s the opposite. I’ve had a sinus infection for three weeks. On day 17, I started taking antibiotics. The next day, I felt much better. Did the antibiotics
The best thing I learned from climbing Climbers feel fear but cannot act on it. Practicing forced restraint widens the gap between stimulus and response. What was a tunnel becomes a decision tree. — “If I fall here,” I thought. “I could die.” I was way above my last piece of gear on a delicate mixed pitch. The
To perform or protect? Which is better? Most mornings, I make pour-over coffee. I weigh and hand-grind 20 grams of whole beans. I pre-rinse a filtered V60 cone. Then I put the grounds in the cone on a mug on a digital scale. When the water reaches ~93 degrees Celsius, I start to pour. First, I saturate
Genetic potential? Excuses matter more. “Uh oh, you’re not going to like that,” my wife said. We were in a bookstore, and I had picked up a copy of The Sports Gene [https://www.amazon.com/Sports-Gene-Extraordinary-Athletic-Performance/dp/161723012X/] . I often sneer at discussions about genetics in sport. It’s not that I disbelieve
"When can I stop easy training?" When I introduced an allowance to our oldest son, I used three jars: Spend, Give, and Save. The three jars represented three big-picture elements of managing money. After describing the first two, I got to the one that I was most excited about, the Save jar. “And with this jar,
