What can we learn from world record speed skater Nils Van Der Poel's approach to training?

The Intersection of Running and Community

A review of my top four pillars of recovery, and why the the boring things will make the biggest difference in your performance.

Reed Fischer reflects on battling injuries, limited race opportunities, the evolving athlete sponsorship landscape, and the mental resilience required at elite level running. His story is a testament to the delicate balance between passion and pragmatism in the pursuit of a dream.

In the age of data, numbers, wearables, and tracking to no end, running by feel has become a lost art. 

In this All Hours blog, we will be discussing the “Norwegian Model” made popular by Jakob Ingebretsen and triathletes Kristian Blummenfeldt and Gustav Iden.

Welcome to All Hours, the bi-weekly After Hours Athletics blog. Here, I’ll break down the physiology, psychology, and philosophy that is foundational to running. I’ll also include a series of guest blogs from impactful people in the running and endurance sport community.

Since finishing my collegiate eligibility, I quickly found that post-collegiate running is vastly different. You don’t have 15 teammates going on every easy run with you, no one is there to hold you accountable every day, and goals and ambition can only come from you.

Strava is great at what it is meant for. I think the biggest strength of the platform is the sense of community it creates. It is interesting, and thought provoking to see what your friends are doing for training and their take on their runs

Ownership is a theme that kept arising in my own running career, and I see the necessity for it now as I look at things from a coaching perspective. I always felt like as an athlete I took some sort of ownership in my training and racing.

In performance circles, you often hear “be process oriented,” “trust the process,” or a number of other taglines to remind you to prioritize ‘process’ over ‘outcomes.’ While this, in my opinion, is certainly the right way to go about training, or any endeavor in life, I wonder if the actual meaning of this gets cheapened the way we talk about it. Today I want to dive into what this actually means (to me), and what it actually looks like.

I spent the last couple weeks in Boulder prepping for my outdoor track season. This was sort of billed as a ‘training camp,’ crossed with ‘work week,’ crossed with ‘hanging out with friends’ crossed with ‘get out of the depressing Minnesota winter.’ My great friends Joe Klecker and Sage Hurta were kind enough to provide housing, entertainment, and dogs for me, my girlfriend, and our puppy.

Summer running… a time where cross country teams everywhere start to prepare for the season ahead. It was one of my favorite things about the sport, when in a team setting. Nothing but miles - some hard, some easy - camaraderie, and a focus on process were at the forefront.

A bit of a different “blog” if you can call it that. But if you are a running nerd like me and want to see my research on carbon plated running shoes, check out this link.