Blog
Beware of buoyancy.
Context is much like buoyancy. It influences outcomes but is often invisible, and sometimes insidious.
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The Poor Man's Power Meter
Learn how to use respiration rate to monitor training intensity and target a sustainable race pace.
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Lactate Curves: 3 Shifts, 13 Reasons
A lactate curve is shaped by the tension between anaerobic and aerobic capacity. Judging a curve by only the latter is incomplete and error prone.
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WHOOP, I did it again.
In 2018, I did a thorough test of WHOOP and sent it back for a refund. Is WHOOP 4.0 any better? (Nope.)
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Five Benefits of Training in Silence
Silence doesn鈥檛 just remove noise鈥攊t reveals signal. And multiplies it by ten.
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How much faster is skimo race gear?
A lot. Based on some back-of-the-napkin testing, every 1% increase in total system weight led to a 5% decrease in uphill speed.
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Sand Castles: A Mental Model of Endurance Training
Learn how training endurance is like building a聽sandcastle. If you get the mix wrong, your castle will collapse.
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The Pure Speed Cheat Sheet
By starting a macrocycle at the extreme of speed, an athlete can start to build a "speed base."
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Four Key Ingredients of Pure Speed
Even long-duration sports benefit from a "speed base." But like many training protocols, how to train pure speed is counter-intuitive.
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Can a three-hour run reveal aerobic threshold?
"Is it crude to use the average heart rate from a 3-hour run to roughly guesstimate aerobic threshold (AeT)?"
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What is your preferred method of testing anaerobic threshold?
"I have been getting frustrated using AeT and thought I was just doing something wrong/not reading the data correctly... If not aerobic threshold, what is your preferred method of testing anaerobic threshold?"
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Detraining: How far can you fall?
Over three years of detraining, my anaerobic and aerobic threshold speeds have declined 23% and 26%, respectively. At a climb rate of 1,000 meters per hour, my heart rate has increased 37%. Detraining, age, altitude鈥攁nd attitude鈥攁re all factors.
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What can you learn from a post-race postmortem?
Should you warm up if you're "only in recreation mode"? Is it worth pushing to avoid bottlenecks? How do you eat when using poles?
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When can you get away with not carrying extra food and water?
Nutrition confusion often comes from guides and plans being labeled "...for Event X." But duration and intensity are the key factors, not distance.
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How long can aerobic capacity improve?
"I've read that aerobic capacity building can go on for 6, 8 or 10 years, even for full-time athletes. And I recently read how Nils van der Poel spent ~30 hours/week for 3 years in building his aerobic base."
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How does cooling down improve aerobic capacity?
"What is the reason for cooling down after a workout? What are the consequences if we never cool down? Does the kind of workout matter? What does the ideal cool down look like?"
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What metabolic information can we get from a flat half-marathon?
"I've read that a time trial for 10k or 45 min or 1 hr is a general test for one's anaerobic threshold, and a marathon is raced at one's aerobic threshold. Is that true?"
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Do we have an effort bias?
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How I Estimate Goal Times
If you run all out for 10 kilometers in 30 minutes, does that mean that you can run all out for 20 kilometers in 60 minutes? No, but there is a way to make a decent estimate of a goal time.
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How much of your training is bioavailable?
"More is better" is almost never the case. Like nutrients, the body can only absorb what it can absorb. Anything more than that dose is wasted or, worse, counterproductive.
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The Basics of Basic Training Principles
To maximize performance, an athlete needs to do some anaerobic training. But to optimize the anaerobic benefits, an athlete needs to have an aerobic foundation. The bigger the base, the bigger the benefit. The bigger the benefit, the better the performance.
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Does arduous exercise compromise immunity?
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What is aerobic evolution?
Many athletes get suckered into believing that physical potential is a genetic lottery. That's only partially true.
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Does more fatigue mean more fitness?
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Gap the mind.
Climbers feel fear but cannot act on it. Forced restraint widens the gap between stimulus and response. A tunnel becomes a decision tree.
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To perform or protect? Which is better?
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Genetic potential? Excuses matter more.
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"When can I stop easy training?"
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What is the most important intensity?
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A Review of My 2018/2019 Skimo Training
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