- I was in the past very focused on separating the distance sessions from the hard workouts. The hard workouts were hard and the distance workouts were easy, says Bjerke.

Bjerke believes however that the distance sessions became too easy and this is where he made the biggest changes in his training. He is now doing more distance sessions that are pretty hard and is no longer so focused on controlling the heart rate during distance workouts.

- I looked at how the older generation skiers like Anders Aukland has trained and copied some of that.

Bjerke is doing 10-day cycles that are pretty similar both summer and fall. He is doing three “low threshold” or intensity “3” (82-87% of max heart-rate) workouts in each cycle. These workouts are each up to 1.5 hour long. He is in addition doing one hard session at intensity 4-5. The rest of the endurance training is distance sessions of varying intensity, often in tough terrain without a heart-rate monitor.