2018 USA Olympic Long Track Speed Skaters and Social Media Links

That's good useful stuff there to keep up with the words and images of the roadskaters and indoor inline skaters who have become such an important part of the Olympic and World Cup long and short track world. I guess some of them are ice first types, and we'll forgive that, ha. Thanks for the links!

Good stuff. Always interesting to hear theories of performance. 

The paragraph from scienceofrunning.com on David Krummenacker is interesting. He had changed coaches and the focus went from endurance/aerobic to high intensity :

When he improved by so much, the assumption was that it was entirely the new training, which obviously played a large role. However, it was probably the combination of the larger aerobic base combined with a decrease in mileage and increase in intensity that did the trick. After several years, his aerobic base was gone, and performances declined.

This fits with my experience. One year, eebee and I actually did scheduled intervals through the summer. We didn't necessarily enjoy it, of course, and we were not so sure we were doing it "right." In fact, eebee would probably say she never felt she could do those really short intervals. But my memory of that year is that we did much better on all the hilly 30 to 87 mile events we did. We used the interval schemes put forth in Barry Publow's Speed on Skates, page 167. This book is old by now (published in 1999, and it'd be great to get an update on the science part of the book), but still has a lot of information and drills and a good discussion of training, heart rate, vo2max, anaerobic threshold, and more. 

Data from my year where I make these vague claims of how much it helped? No. But I recall we were strong on the hills and I credit that with adding intervals, plus lots of training rides on skates in the company of recreational cyclists. I think intervals also helped reduce my tendency to cramp. I always say the cure for cramping is training. I don't know if it needs to be intervals, aerobic endurance, or both. I lean toward the latter.

But if anyone wants other people's data, this is far better...the source material for the excellent scienceofrunning.com post.

https://beaconhillstriders.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Renato-Canova-Development-of-Strengthy-Endurance.pdf