Elofsson Skips Rest of Season!

I will be the first to admit I was wrong. I said Per Elofsson would
win races this season. Well... It sounds like he's going to skip the
rest of the season. If he does, he won't win any races.

Is it that these guys are so close to the edge that this kind of stuff
can happen? Alsgaard, Svan, Wasberg and others have had problems
during their careers.

Jay Tegeder
"Keep training, lycra never lies!" JT

Jay Tegeder wrote:

I will be the first to admit I was wrong. I said Per Elofsson would
win races this season. Well... It sounds like he's going to skip the
rest of the season. If he does, he won't win any races.

Is it that these guys are so close to the edge that this kind of stuff
can happen? Alsgaard, Svan, Wasberg and others have had problems
during their careers.

As Mathias Fredriksson said some days ago, "we are all training at the
edge and sometimes we cross it". Some just does more badly than
others and have a harder time to come back. He also talked about
when he overtrained his legs badly because of some upperbody injury,
broken ribbs?

--

Forward in all directions

Janne G

(Jay Tegeder) wrote in message . com...

I will be the first to admit I was wrong. I said Per Elofsson would
win races this season. Well... It sounds like he's going to skip the
rest of the season. If he does, he won't win any races.

It appears that his decision grew from "not racing the
next weekend, but going back to moderate training and
quite probably racing when he´ll feel like it" to "just
training moderately and maybe later racing if I´ll feel
like it" to "just resting until January and training as
lightly as I´ll feel until April-May".


Is it that these guys are so close to the edge that this kind of stuff
can happen? Alsgaard, Svan, Wasberg and others have had problems
during their careers.

The assistant national coach almost calls him "burnedout"
rather than just overtrained: "Both the body and the mind
are affected."

The problem with Per may lie in what used to be his strong
suit: he knew his body so well, probably way better than
most skiers knew theirs, and therefore he didn´t need to
pay so much attention to tests and laboratory values. When
his sense failed him, it possibly allowed him to go further
overboard than other skiers in the same situation would´ve
done - and it´s been a much greater shock for him that he
no longer can rely on his reading of the signals of his
body!


The asst coach speculated that apart from giving too little
time for recovery between hard sessions, Per may not have
eaten properly during hard training; he may have consumed
too little fat. ""But unfortunately we know very little
about overtraining. There are no simple answers to why and
how it occurs like this."

"He´d already (in the spring/ changed his training, lowered
the amount and shorted the intervals, and accepted that this
was a year in betweeen for Per and hé had no ambition of
winning any races."

After Per´s sudden decision to fly back home from Uppsala
(where he´d undergone tests under a known specialist Dr.),
the asst coach apparently assumed until Per´s press
conference in Umeå that Per would continue to train and
would return to racing sometime this season.


From the press conference:

Q: How is it, mentally?
A: I haven´t had /sought/ any help on that side. It has been
tough for a while and maybe I´ll need help also on that side
now ahead.

Q: How does it feel, is this a catastrophe?
A: Well, 9/11 was a catastrophe.
Life goes on for me, I will do everything in my powers to re-
turn. And I mean *everything*.
One wants so much to go out and race. It´s the greatest to be
there on the World Cup. It is the life to live.
But one musn´t look so negatively at it. I´m doing this because
I want to recapture the position that is mine normally. There-
fore Í must accept the consequences. This is a completely new
situation for me.

Q: Have you thought about retiring?
A: The thought has struck me a couple of times. But I´ve
struck it down just as quickly. I see the risk of my career
being over as very very small. My heart´s still burning to
do what I want to do, ski.

Q: What will you do just now?
A: Go Christmas shopping like everyone else.




Anders

Jay Tegeder wrote:

I will be the first to admit I was wrong. I said Per Elofsson would
win races this season. Well... It sounds like he's going to skip the
rest of the season. If he does, he won't win any races.

Is it that these guys are so close to the edge that this kind of stuff
can happen? Alsgaard, Svan, Wasberg and others have had problems
during their careers.

Jay Tegeder
"Keep training, lycra never lies!" JT

This is one of the things that struck me when reading `Endless Winter'.
Bodensteiner always seemed to be coming down with some cold/flu/etc.,
training through it, or recovering from it. I have heard that this level
of training acts as a stressor and has suppressive effects on the immune
system.

Chris

As reported in English from http://www.fasterskier.com/news.php?id=730
(summary from other news on www.skidsport.com but swedish text), the problem
seems to be an overtraining problem.
But (I think) the real question is: why Per need to train so hardly to go
overtrained?
Don't forget his problem during last season: Eurosport commentator during a
race 1 year ago, spoke about "mononucleosis" (in italian "mononucleosi", i
don't know in English) an infection that cause fever, soar ...
Ciao.

"Jay Tegeder" wrote in message
om...
I will be the first to admit I was wrong. I said Per Elofsson would
win races this season. Well... It sounds like he's going to skip the
rest of the season. If he does, he won't win any races.

Is it that these guys are so close to the edge that this kind of stuff
can happen? Alsgaard, Svan, Wasberg and others have had problems
during their careers.

Jay Tegeder
"Keep training, lycra never lies!" JT

PF wrote:

As reported in English from http://www.fasterskier.com/news.php?id=730
(summary from other news on www.skidsport.com but swedish text), the problem
seems to be an overtraining problem.
But (I think) the real question is: why Per need to train so hardly to go
overtrained?
Don't forget his problem during last season: Eurosport commentator during a
race 1 year ago, spoke about "mononucleosis" (in italian "mononucleosi", i
don't know in English) an infection that cause fever, soar ...

If you start training to hard to soon after a real sickness then it is wery easy
to overtrain.

--

Forward in all directions

Janne G