By Johan Trygg
Team Ramudden did a strong season X where both Max Novak and Ida Dahl had significant breakthroughs and won the Youth competition. Lina Korsgren won the Sprint competition and triumphed for the second time at Vasaloppet.
Now the yellow team is training hard for new successes during season XI. We followed the Pro Team during a day on their training camp in Båstad in southern Sweden. On the program: a rock-hard training session signed by cycling coach Mattias Reck.
Mattias Reck, well known in the cycling world where he is a coach for the WorldTour cycling team Trek Segafredo. Last winter, Max Novak trained according to Reck’s plan and was successful. For the coming season, Reck also coaches Lina Korsgren and Ida Dahl and has an overall coaching role in Team Ramudden.
The original plan for Team Ramudden was to go abroad for an autumn training camp, but due to the circumstances, Pro Team manager Gustaf Korsgren chose to stay in Sweden and go down to southern Sweden at Båstad in Skåne instead.
“This is a fantastic place for roller skiing,” says Gustaf
On Thursday last week, Mattias Reck was on-site and guided Team Ramudden’s athletes on a long training session on Hallandsåsen, a massive ridge with many small paved roads. The workout lasted 4.5 to 5 hours, slightly different for different athletes, and included several rounds of intervals. At the beginning of the workout, some rounds with three-minute intervals and after four hours, 40/20 uphill intervals.
“The final destination for a long distance skier is to be able to ski as fast as possible at the end of a race. For a training session such this, one must be quite prepared. It is not something you do in May or June, but now we are starting to approach the season. This is a key workout where you connect both intensity and quantity. You cannot train so much harder than this. If you do 40/20 or 30/30 intervals at the end of the training session you more or less put out of everything you can. It stimulates endurance very much but you have to be prepared for it,” says Reck and continues;
“Therefore, it is good to do such sessions, the closer you get to the season. This type of workout should not be done too often. It requires resting. It will be on well-chosen occasions. So it’s no wonder we have a day off tomorrow.”
Can you tell us more about a type of workout like this and its connection to cycling training?
“The workout we did today is entirely copy-paste on a fairly typical bicycle workout.”
“First we did a lot of 3/1 min intervals, which is quite common in cycling. It is a form of a slightly stressed threshold. If you do a little shorter threshold intervals, you can keep a higher power instead of doing them for 8-10 minutes. In this context, they are mostly there to make you feel a little mushy and tired. The specific thing about this workout is that you more or less have to give everything you have at the end when you start to get mushy.”
“If I should I say something more about this session… at the end when the athletes push extra hard, we try to squeeze in extra carbs. It has been shown that to have sufficiently efficient utilization of carbohydrates; you need to train it. It does not come by itself. It is about trying to consume 80 to 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour.
Mattias Reck points the direction.
The Team Ramudden athletes was pumped out but happy athletes after the last intervals.
Jenny Larsson commented on the workout like this:
“There was a tense atmosphere in the group this morning. Everyone knew what to expect. I had a mixed feeling. You have time to feel both better and worse on a workout like this, but you have to fight hard and do your best. It was an OK feeling in the body.
What does it mean to be able to fight against such good skiers on such training sessions?
“It means a lot. You can always see and learn a lot from the others, both girls and boys. I have worked a lot with my uphill technique, where you have to hang on and learn from Ida and Lina. I think all three of us will become to be reckoned with in season XI.
Here are some other comments from the other Team Ramudden athletes right after Thursday’s training session:
Ida Dahl:
“I’m really really tired. It will be nice to come back to the hotel now.”
How will you feel tonight?
“I’ll probably still be pretty tired. If I rest a bit in the afternoon, maybe I feel like a human for dinner tonight.
Lina Korsgren lay down in the grass down after the last intervals and it took a while before she got up.
Jenny Larsson checks how Lina Korsgren feels after the last intervals. In the foreground, Ida Dahl rests on her poles.
What did you say to yourself when you lay down by the side of the road?
“I was so done… Jenny came up to the side of me all the time and I had to fight back. It’s great that we can push like this against each other.”
Max Novak:
“I’m glad I have these (Johannes and Herman) in my team, so I do not have to be beaten by anyone else this winter. It feels like we are damn strong. We encourage each other well and complement each other well during the session. So fun.”
Herman Paus, Team Ramudden’s 20 years young new acquisition from Norway:
“It feels good but it’s a tough program Reck is putting up for us. I just have to stay on the rear wheels of Johannes and Max as long as possible.
It seems that it was going well?
“Today it went very well. Hopefully, it will feel like this in the winter as well… I learn a lot from them, both technically and tactically.
Johannes Eklöf:
“It felt good today. Max was so strong last season, so it feels good to be able to hang on to him. Otherwise, you often do tough workouts yourself; you do not really know what it is worth. It’s nice to receive confirmation that it’s enough.”
