Refuses to rest: The 31-year-old from Rustad is skipping the off-season and diving straight into six brutal weeks of training.

The 31-year-old from Team Rustad Oslo isn’t quite like other long-distance skiing pros. Most of them, for example, take time for a proper off-season to rest in April before the training season begins.

But Magnus Waaler has barely finished the Ski Classics season before launching full-scale preparations for the next one.

He has big ambitions for what will be his third serious Ski Classics season.

“I’m going to win the Klarälvsloppet,” Waaler tells Langrenn.com.

“I may have long odds, but it’s not impossible that I could win Klarälvsloppet. I’ve got further to go before I’m at the top in the big Ski Classics races this winter.”

So far, his best result in the prestigious long-distance series is 39th place. And he knows why – and what needs to change.

“I can see that I’m simply not fit enough. I need to improve my capacity,” says Waaler.

Operation O2

Now he’s taking action, with an ambitious training program to boost his VO₂ max. And Waaler is doing it in an unconventional way.

Most athletes kick off the training year with high volume and maybe some extra strength work in May–June, saving the hard intervals for autumn.

But Waaler is starting straight away with an intense block of high-intensity sessions when the season begins on May 1. For six weeks in May and June, he’ll do capacity-building hard sessions every other day.

What does the O2 project involve?

The O2 block program is simple. Waaler will rotate between four standard workouts that he’ll repeat throughout the block: uphill bounding intervals (elghufs), track running intervals, treadmill intervals, and double-poling intervals on the ski erg.

“With standard sessions done the same way each time, it’s easier to measure progress, and I get a lot of useful training data,” he says.

One reason Waaler is starting the training year so intensely is that it allows him to fit in two such VO₂ max blocks before the Ski Classics season. He plans to run a similar block starting at the end of September.

Advice from Aukland: Go more extreme

Waaler designed the framework for the capacity block himself, with input from people like Carl Fredrik Hagen, former pro cyclist and partner of this year’s Ski Classics overall winner, Anikken Gjerde Alnæs. He also gathers tips from other experts.

“I initially planned to run the block for four weeks, but after speaking with Anders Aukland during the Reistadløpet, he said I should make it 50 percent longer. So now it’s six weeks,” Waaler says.

Read more: “You gotta harden up”

Lots of training between O2 blocks

Between the O2 blocks in May–June and autumn, Waaler plans a solid period of high training volume and roller skiing. But while many do one or two threshold sessions per week in such periods, Waaler plans to double that.

From VO₂ max to FATmax

The first part of the mid-period, from mid-June to the end of August, is dedicated to a block he calls “Fat-max/VLA-max.”

“Many think ‘Fat-max’ is about reducing body fat. But it’s actually about how much lactate your body can handle over time. So during this phase, I focus on training that helps me go faster while staying around the glycogen threshold,” he explains:

“The goal is to avoid going above about 1.5 mmol of lactate. So I do sessions where I stay at up to 75 percent of max heart rate, with relatively long intervals. That could be 3×30 minutes, 3×20 minutes, 4×15 minutes, and variations like that.”

This kind of training is something Waaler plans to continue during the season as well.

“I asked Carl Fredrik (Hagen) about it, and he thinks it’s not necessary to periodize this type of training. You can basically do it year-round.”

How will it go?
“I’m very curious to see. The coach at Rustad IL doesn’t think I can increase my VO₂ max much since I’m ‘so old.’”

But Magnus Waaler believes he still has a lot of potential, since he only started training systematically in 2022.

Are there risks with such an extreme training regime?
“Yes, there’s definitely a danger of burning out if you love training as much as I do – especially during the O2 blocks. But I think I’ll be able to recognize the red flags in time and pull back before I crash.”

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