Good Indications from Lake Placid
Posted by Zach Caldwell on October 6th, 2007Kris has been in Lake Placid with the rest of the National Team, and a bunch of others, for the past couple of days. Friday was a very easy day of training, just about an hour of skating, easy. Today Kris did his first session with the sprinters, and the indications were quite good. Perhaps more importantly, the lactate response seems to point to a fairly highly-refined level of fitness.
The format of today’s session was a bit different from anything Kris has been doing. They did a three-minute effort, basically at race pace. The target was (as I understand it) a minimum of 10 mMol/L. Kris approached this as a maximal effort, and he had the fastest time by three seconds, finishing at just over 14mMol/L. Andy Newell was also in the 14mMol/L range. I don’t have times or lactates for other athletes. The remainder of the session was six 90 second efforts targeting a finishing lactate of 6mMol/L. Kris started this phase by following Newell, and for the first couple of efforts his lactates were about 5.5mMol/L and 3.5mMol/L. It seems that, for the first one, he may still have been clearing the first effort. As the second lactate dropped fairly low, he did the remainder of the efforts at his own pace - a bit faster.
All of this is encouraging. It’s impossible to compare efforts to rollerskis with any reliability, but for Kris to be “in there” with the sprinters is a very positive indication. Those guys are legitimately fast, and for Kris to have access to that kind of pace is really good news. It’s very hard to gauge such factors training in isolation.
Perhaps the most interesting data-point is that 14mMol/L value after the 3-minute effort. That is a very high lactate for Kris, and indicates that he has well developed lactate mobilization capacity at this point. This has been one of the training goals as we turned the focus toward intensity. However, that 14mMol/L value is higher than what I would have expected at this point after a single 3 minute effort. This is not bad news - it’s apparent (from the fact that he was going as fast or faster than some of the best sprinters in the world) that he’s “buying” very high workloads with that high effort.
It’s very clear, based on Kris’s sensations, that such a response would have been impossible 10 days ago. The light training load of the past week appears to have given him a bounce in his ability to bring the workload up quickly. We saw that in the Sunapee test as well, but it wasn’t accompanied by an impressive time.
Today’s effort does shed some light on the Sunapee test result though. Today we learned that Kris can generate 14mMol/L in three minutes of effort. At Sunapee he went out and intentionally threw any thought of pacing the effort out the window. He did that because during the previous training block he’d had a lot of difficulty bringing his heart rate up. However, he did the Sunapee test somewhat rested, and his heart rate came up quickly. If he went out and generated something on the order of 12 to 14mMol/L in the first few minutes of the Sunapee test, and then he carried that level of acidosis up the rest of the hill, then there’s no big surprise that he went a bit slow. And now we know that he’s CAPABLE of generating that level of acidosis quickly.
All of this inspires quite a lot of confidence in Kris’s current form. We’ll need to keep a close eye on the next few sessions. He’s got an OD schedule for Tuesday, and it’ll be interesting to see how much less glycogen he’s storing compared to when he was doing multiple six hour sessions per week. This session is scheduled for five hours, but Kris is aware that he may need an earlier bail-out. On Thursday Kris will do double-pole intervals with the sprinters. That’ll be another opportunity to measure his workload capacity, and gain some more indication of his fitness level. And the big test is the roller ski time trial on Saturday - a week from today. If the coming sessions support the observation that Kris has made rapid gains in high-end anaerobic fitness and lactate mobilization, then we just need to look for appropriate recovery and load management. We still want to see a good Sunapee test as an indication of where his fitness is compared to last year. He’ll have an opportunity for that on Wednesday, the 17th.
If the last Sunapee test raised more questions than it answered, I think we got some answers today. And fortunately, the answers are encouraging. There is clearly work to be done before Kris heads over to test himself against the rest of the World’s best. But today it looks like the tools are available to get the job done.
6 Responses to “Good Indications from Lake Placid”
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October 7th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Go kris go!!! you’ll kick some euro,s ass this winter im sure about it!!!!
give her the first world cup is almost there !!!
October 7th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I’ve been checking out this site for a few months now and it’s great! I find that pretty interesting about the high lactate value because of the main distance focus in Kris’ training. I have heard of other distance machines like a former marathon World record holder who’s lactate value could rarely go above 3 mmol/L even while going “all out” on a treadmill. People called him a slacker and said he wasn’t going hard enough. I thought Kris’ system would be fairly similar to this runner’s and that his levels wouldn’t get up to the 14 mmol/L range without being metabolized. Interesting though.
October 7th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
That 90 hour block a few weeks ago was amazing and very impressive on paper.
I was flabergasted by the training hours and intensity.
What you have told us subsequently seems to be classic indicators of overtraining (Inability to reach previous performance levels, higher than expected lactate levels, inability to bring his heart rate up). If he is irritable, sleeping poorly, and feels “cruddy” or finding it difficult to motivate…please beware. Don’t jepordize the season by pressing on with the prescribed regimen when red flags are flying all around you. Don’t put blinders on the data, including subjective feelings of well being or malaise, because you want Kris to push harder and acheive more than last year.
I am no exercise physiologist or coach, but most of what you are communicating to us seems to suggest that more recovery is in order. Am I missing something? It certainly is a complex and difficult situation.
Good luck with the training. It is fascinating observing the remarkable training and coaching of an amazing athlete. Kris is an inspiration to all skiers, but especially young American skiers. He is also a superb role model for my type 1 diabetic patients. If he can train and perform with the best in the world, surely they can keep their hemoglobin A1Cs in check and tidy up their diet a bit!
Thanks for sharing Kris’s quest with us. Best wishes for a stellar season.
jamie
October 8th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
The cold season is coming up and I know that a big part of Kris’ racing plan involves staying healthy. I know a big part of staying health involves avoiding external stressors but I also know that there is a significant link between intense aerobic exercise, travel and increased rate of upper respiratory infections.
How does Kris and the national team avoid and deal with illnesses like the common cold and flu? Do you have protocols established for how to get over an illness more effectively?
I know this questions might not relate exactly to this particular post, so maybe you could include it later in some sort of “answer questions about Kris” post.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Zach
Altitude, strength (at least in the weight room type), and summer on snow time are three areas in which Kris’s training this year, to date, seem different, or at least not emphasized in the blog, from many published accounts of other world class skiers.
What is Kris, Pete and your thinking on these items and their place in KF’s training?
Regards,
October 11th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Lots of good questions. I’ll try to contain the answers to avoid writing a book before bedtime.
Thomsen - Very good observation regarding Kris’s high peak lactate. I may have under-stated my surprise at that value. It’s worth noting that Kris has always reach a high level of anaerobic fitness very easily. He’s not a classic “slow-twitch” animal. His main qualifications as a distance athlete are his large motor and his capacity to handle a huge amount of training. This allows him to focus on developing the oxidative capacity of his FOG fibers. But he’s definitely not cut from the same cloth as the standard elite marathoner.
Jamie - thanks for the warranted note of concern. We’re paying close attention to red-flags, and we’ve certainly seen a few of them flying. Kris has generally been feeling good, and sleeping well (and a lot). It is very clear that continuing on the course he was on would have been a very bad idea. That’s one of the reason that one out of every four weeks in his schedule is planned as true recovery, with no training goals aside from being ready for the next block. A day off at a time is an insufficient “pressure release valve” to allow the whole system to come to equilibrium. The training load is low right now - Kris is responding well. Pete and the rest of the coaching staff have a close eye on things, and are very pleased with his fitness and his form. We’ll see additional “bounce” in the next week. My guess is that we’ll be loading some volume back on before long, to keep the train from leaving the station too soon.
Scott - excellent question - illness is a huge concern. The biggest part of Kris’s plan for staying healthy is to travel rested. It’s really a game of limiting exposure to pathogens, and dealing with known exposure (like air travel) by showing up very well recovered. Kris generally ratchets back his training quite a lot in the lead-up to travel - especially the long hauls.
As for additional protocols and USST strategies - I’m really not qualified to comment. I’m just a stay-at-home coach for the most part. When I met Kris at Spring Series up in Presque Isle this past March, he showed up to dinner and cleaned his hands at the table with a little bottle of Purell. “That’s smart”, I thought. Yeah, no-****. These guys deal with this all the time. Maybe Kris can expound upon this if he gets bored enough.
Andrew - That’s a lot of question for a few words. I’ll address your points briefly. I can’t speak for Pete, aside from saying that he is a large part of establishing the priorities in Kris’s training, and he’s very supportive of the path that has been chose. So, don’t take my answers as Pete’s thinking.
Altitude - The short answer is that Kris has generally not suffered in competitions at altitude. Further, in the next several years there is not a large emphasis on high altitude competitions. So altitude acclimatization is not a large factor. The use of altitude stimulus to enhance cardiac output and hemoglobin concentration represents are large stress. Kris has chosen to focus on high quality training, and to minimize external stresses in the interest of optimizing his training efforts. These priorities may shift if the focus on training quality starts to produce diminishing returns and the altitude piece seems to address a deficiency.
Strength - I tend to get a bit worked up on this one. Strength is a very specific adaptation - specific to both motion and speed. The sport-specific carry-over from general “weight-room” strength gains has never been shown to be large - something on the order of 2% at most (for flat-water paddlers, I think). Muscle fibers are selectively fired according to muscle tension. If the muscle encounters a high-tension load then fast-twitch fibers will be selectively recruited. When these recruitment patterns are reinforced and these fibers and metabolic pathways are reinforced we’re building unsustainable strength. Strength gains made in glycolytic fibers do not “transfer” to oxidative fibers. Your strength is only as good as the strength you can bring to bear for the duration of your event. If you need to increase the workload that you can sustain double-poling for a half-hour event, then you need to go double-pole for at least half an hour. You can add resistance by using slow skis, or go up hills, but the motion and speed should be appropriate to something like the final application.
There needs to be a distinction made between hypertrophic strength gains (muscle building) and neurological strength gains. The most immediate gains made in any strength regime are in neurological activation of the fibers. You can gain the ability to fire a greater percentage of your motor-units in coordination, and therefor develop more force more quickly. That type of training effect can be realized quickly - over six to eight weeks of regular stimulation. That’s valuable stuff when it’s well timed and specific. Hypertrophic gains made in weight-room routines are usually hard-fought, and worth little.
Summer snow-time - Once again it comes down to training quality. My uncle John has a good rule of thumb regarding travel - give yourself a day per time-zone to recover from travel before you’re at full effectiveness. This may be an exaggeration, but even at half of that, the trip to New Zealand is very disruptive of training rhythm. Kris went for a number of years. Each year he got sick within a week of his return. The best-case scenario was ten days lost to travel and sickness. The benefits of on-snow time are not to be ignored, but the costs must be weighed. Kris has generally not suffered in the transition to snow. He’s good on his feet, and finds his equilibrium within days, or at worst a week or two of starting his snow-skiing. In the summer, his focus is on hard, uninterrupted training. Maybe he’d make use of a closer summer-ski resource if it was easily available. But it’s not, so he uses rollerskis.