I didn’t read the articles…. But what is the nose breathing thing?
it is a popular opinion (especially on social media) that nose breathing is a good surrogate for identification of LT1/AeT/upper zone2 boundary (e.g. when nose breathing is not feasible anymore).
this does not work for me. La-testing checked. and as it seems KJ does not use it for zone 2 either.
Thank you for posting, both were fascinating reads.
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Completely agree. Thanks for sharing @sryke 
Is this some kind of elevation simulation gimmick they are trying in training?
Have to admit… The nose breathing thing drives me crazy. As a XC coach, I see athletes all the time (usually those struggling in the back) trying to breath through their nose, but aren’t getting enough oxygen. They are literally restricting oxygen getting to their lungs and unable to run as fast. I’ve seen my athletes do it and asked them why and they usually say they saw it somewhere or someone told them too. Breaking them of that hasn’t been easy.
Largest pipe is the esophagus (edit: trachea). So then it would make sense that the way to get air to where it needs to go is… wait for it…the biggest pipe. Why anyone would restrict oxygen on purpose in an aerobic competition is crazy to me.
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You’re not supposed to nose breathe the entire time, it’s that you should be able to nose breathe the entire time. The effort should be such that switching over to nose breathing causes no perceptible increase in effort. Much like the “talk test”, no expectations of reading Great Expectations aloud during each run, but the effort should be such that you can read a few sentences and still be able to run at the same pace without perceptible increase in effort.
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I think you meant trachea, not esophagus
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This ^
Better than the talk test as it seems to me to have less of a margin of error. You are definitely going easy nose breathing.
Personally when running easy I nose breathe for 30 - 60 second every mile if I get stressed out I ease off the pace if I feel well within myself I go a couple of seconds faster per mile faster. Next mile same procedure, keep repeating each mile until done.
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I take it you were under your LT1 nose breathing?
If so by much?
Good luck with that! 
Yup… you’re right! I shouldn’t vent right when I wake up in the morning. 
Also incredible that he won UTMB right after having Covid.
Also interesting that he uses a run powermeter (but probably due to sponsoring). Not sure, for what it would be useful given he surely know his body and it‘s not clear what a run pm actually measures.
In the trail running article they mention that Z4 is his „race pace“, but that surely depends on the distance.
Also wondering, if he is really so convinced of Maurten or if this is due to sponsorship.
Do you think there’s benefit in looking at what non road pros post? What the people in the lifetime Grand Prix do would likely be interesting, and World Cup mountain bike racers. Both or these groups seem to race substantially less than road pros, and are optimizing for slightly different demands
Thanks for posting these.
Spent time reading these and burrowing into the links. Not for this thread, but found the minimalist strength training paper to be of interest.
https://osf.io/preprints/sportrxiv/eq485
Would suggest any discussion on strength training protocols be continued here:
This thread contains quite a few mountain bikers. Even a lot of information on other sports. Not sure what could be learned from any elite training.
Seiler talks with Kilian about training.
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That research paper’s title is a mouthful
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16:50 - 18:45 was interesting to hear. I’ve been interested in fasted/low carb training again lately even though a few years back I thought I would never do it again. Ofc it’s important for ultra etc. But the health argument about metabolic flexibiliy is what i mean
it works for an athlete with a 80+ vo2max maybe in certain phases.
Also, fasted with full muscle glycogen is very different from fasted with low muscle glycogen.
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