32 degrees wrote
50 hours/week . . . that's huge hours.

I rode 50 hours in 5 days just about three weeks ago on a vacation trip. At
the 48th hour I felt real fresh going up a long climb. I have no doubt I
could ride 50 hours a week for lots and lots of weeks in a row if I were
being paid enough.

I'm sure there's been a couple of weeks in my life when I skied 50 hours in
a week: Classic in the backcountry. I feel confident I could ski 50 hours of
Classic per week for months if I were being paid enough.

I've never been anywhere close to any sort of elite athlete level in any
kind of bicycling or skiing or any sport. I would not be surprised to learn
that Floyd Landis has 2 or 3 times my power output for the same time
duration.

My secret for long hours is just being very disciplined to keep going slow.
My bicycle during that week had very low gears, and I used them. Lots of
cyclists on serious multi-day long-distance tours will ride 50 hours in a
week.

The reason I could ski Classic for 50 hours in a week is that the slow
version of Classic is walking (and I did lots of it). The reason I'm not
confident to Skate for 50 hours is that I'm not sure I could keep my power
output low enough on real snow, and still be actually skating.

Did that training volume improve my performance? Yes. I did a measured
"threshold" test on an indoor training bicycle before and after. My
improvement rate was about the same as from a typical summer week with 10-14
hours of bicycling -- fewer hours but more intensity.

Ken