Last season was a failure: the Lahti World Championships found the solution

SELECTED: On the 6th of April our cross-country skier Finn Hågen Krogh finished the season with a 188th place in the Norwegian 10 kilometer classics championship. If the distance traveled by the NM had not returned to Alta, he would probably never have taken the skis that day.

The season was already over. This had failed.

A year earlier, he had become the great hero of Norway when he had traveled to Norway for gold at the World Championships in Lahti. In a small work of art of a relay, he stood apart from his Russian rival Sergei Ustjugov, despite the fact that he could hear his several breaths times during the spectacular retreat.

Then came the Olympic season. The 28-year-old Finn had become one of the best runners of the best cross-country race in the world. He wanted to be even better.

He was brought to the national team as a whole after three seasons in the sprint country team. He intensified the amount of training and participated in a high level training.

"It did not work for me," he says quietly.

Take courses

It has long been known that Finn Hågen Krogh is a great talent, especially in the field of free technology, and that he could perform with relatively little training. The season when he attended the World Cup, he recorded about 300 hours of training less than Martin Johnsrud Sundby.

When he intensified the training, it did not work. It has at least given him new knowledge.

"What happened last season gives me the feeling that it's just that I'm training" little ".

He has reduced his training considerably before the upcoming season. In the spring, after being relegated to 18th place, he stopped completely. He spent time on the scooter and the outdoor activities. No training.

– The number of training hours is significantly lower this season. It also concerns the fact that I took it all the time. I used the first period to train myself again. Nevertheless, I have never put so much emphasis on time and training. The most important thing was to do good workouts that make me better, Krogh said.

Was brutally punished

He will not call himself for his classic superiors last season. It was a little too much of a lot of other things. A little too much exercise, a little too much training in height, a little too much intensity in the sessions with the complete team.

"I was not knocked down so I could not ski, I looked more like the light version of the supernatural, I felt useful, but the last gear was missing, and if you do not, you'll be brutally punished in the sport. high level.

Size-skepticism

Finn Hågen Krogh is one of the Norwegian cross-country runners skeptical about the traditional Norwegian height-based diet. A scheme in which two stays of three weeks in high season will be put in place before the season, highlights the unfolding of the championship. When he joined the all-terrain team before last season, he followed the classic height training pattern.

This obviously did not produce results.

– Maybe the body reacts better to exercise than to the height.

This season he is back in the sprint team. There is no more than 14 days high altitude in Val Senales.

He accepts. But it is also up to it. He was one of the Norwegian runners to have resisted well in the northern Italian valley despite sharing his room with Petter Northug. Northug was known for his stomach and eventually had to cancel his stay.