How a Pro Footballer Became an Elite Cyclist

In 2002, a heavy knee-injury forced pro footballer Knut Anders Fosterveld to end his 12 year long career at the top of Norwegian football. 

For over 15 years, football dominated his life. Now at age 30 it was all over. Imagine you’re invested in a passion for 15 years, it defines parts of your identity, and all of a sudden it’s gone. It must have been a tough time. But Fostervold wasn’t done with being an athlete. Not yet. He always strived to explore his limits. That was his mindset ever since. At age 12 he ran an incredible 17:24 minutes in the 5k. That’s not only a testament for his insane endurance capacity, but also for his inner game. 

Much to the pleasure of his knee he didn’t pick up running again. He found joy in cycling instead. 

Here’s a story of a guy who found his second air in cycling, about intervals and long slow distance, and one of the best endurance sports systems in the world. 

Everything Is Hard at First

Fostervold’s start in cycling was hard. He did what everyone else would do when starting an endurance sport: train hard. 

His training approach was intense. He focused on training at or just under his second lactate threshold and near VO2max. There was no time for easy days. And he never trained more than 10 hours per week. A typical week would look like this:

• 4-5×4 minute Intervals at 95% of VO2max 2-3 times per week
• Fill the rest with as much threshold riding as you can tolerate

He followed that rhythm for two and a half years. It was both humiliating and frustrating. He didn’t make much progress despite all the pain. Until he reached out for help…

Olympiatoppen or a Strong Support System 

At the end of 2004, Fostervold had enough. He wanted to take a step forward. So he reached out to Olympiatoppen, Norway’s Top Sport Centre, and was heard. But it was not a fast fix. Fostervold experienced a complete change in training. It changed by 180 degrees. 

Here’s what they did:

• They doubled his training volume from 8-10 to 18-20 hours per week.
• No constant tempo grind. Instead of upper Zone 2, they put him on a huge volume of easy Zone 1 riding (we get to the Zones used soon). 
• They replaced his painful VO2max intervals in Zone 5 with longer, easier Zone 3 and 4 intervals at LT2 (FTP). This allowed total interval work to triple from 20 to 60 minutes per session without overstressing Fostervold. 

At the end of 2004 a typical training week for Fostervold would like this:

• Around 16 hours of easy endurance at 55-75% of max heart rate
• 8×8 or 5×12 minutes at 85-90% of max heart rate twice per week

Subtle changes, to be honest, but as you can see in the pictures below, he experienced a big transformation in just 18 weeks. 

Heading into 2005, Fostervold was a different rider. His physiological capacity went from elite to world-class . His VO2max increased from 81 to 88 ml per minute per kilogram. His second lactate threshold went from 375 watts to 440 watts. That’s a 65 watts improvement in 18 weeks. Imagine what a 14 percent higher FTP would do to your performance. Just for comparison his watts per kilogram increased from 4.5 to 5.2 watts per kilo at threshold without a change in body weight. 

He got there by switching to barely pushing himself, almost cruising along for hours on end. 

It’s astounding, isn’t it? He fought so hard for two and a half years with little improvement only to see a breakthrough when he spent almost all his time working way below his potential, purposefully not pushing himself to the limit. 

He doesn’t race at that easy pace, of course – he might be at the highest possible intensity for an hour or more in a race. 

But in training, you tend to build the best endurance machine when restraint is favored over intensity, when your body gets a signal to adapt vs. it’s been temporarily tortured, and when you’re less subject to injury and mental burnout. 

After studying endurance training for over 30 years exercise physiologist Stephen Seiler puts it best: 

Ok improving your numbers is great and all, but it doesn’t help if you can’t see it on the results sheet. For Fostervold, though, that was not an issue.  

Fostervold’s Breakthrough Years

With his new gained fitness, Fostervold was able to improve his race performance by a huge margin. He got third at the Norwegian time trial champs in 2005 seconds behind former under-23 time trial champions and Tour de France stage winners Thor Hushovd and Kurt Asle Arvesen. 

But that’s not all. 

In the 2006 and 2007 season he represented Norway at the world time trial champs against stars like Fabian Cancellara. Sure he missed out on a top result. But he came even closer to a national time trial title in 2007 falling short only seconds to Edvald Boasson Hagen. 

When we consider that he had just started his cycling journey at age 30, it puts his success and failure in a whole new light.

How to Make Your Own Story

What I find so fascinating about Fostervold’s story is that it’s not one of those classic extreme examples. One where a pro follows such an extreme training regime that it’s impossible for others to replicate. 

Fostervold is a great example for so many pro cyclists and keen amateurs. He assumed that to get better he had to train as hard as possible. If a session doesn’t feel exhausting it might not be useful at all. 

It was only when Norway’s elite sport culture taught him to seek balance and internalize the three most important aspects of training that things started to turn around for him. He established a justified training volume. He completed well-balanced high intensity sessions week after week. And he built a reasonable training intensity distribution that allowed him to recover and repeat it day after day. 

That’s what actually brings success. 

In the years between Fostervold’s story and today, science collected more and more research on the big impact these three training concepts have on endurance performance. That is as valid for the pro cyclist as it is for the amateur training with time constraints. It sounds counterintuitive, but training has to have a balanced blend of hard and easy work for fitness to compound. There’s only so much training you can absorb per week.

Yet, few people follow through on it. 

If you want to make your own story in cycling – that doesn’t mean any big or crazy goal that other people find impressive, it can be as small as seeing your FTP go up or improving the time on your favorite segment – you have to practice the key principles. These alone will take you 95 percent of the way toward your potential. 

Fostervold made that realization many years ago when he started to work with Norway’s Top Sport Centre. And similar to a Chinese proverb, the best time for you to start is now. 

If You Want to Apply These Training Principles

I have training plans available at TrainingPeaks build on these timeless training principles:

RV Cycling Training Plans

And if you’re interested in my coaching services, you can contact me here.

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Resources

1. Seiler, Tønnessen, 2009 – Intervals, Thresholds, and Long Slow Distance: the Role of Intensity and Duration in Endurance Training
2. Wikipedia – Knut Anders Fostervold
3. Muñoz et al., 2013 – Does Polarized Training Improve Performance in Recreational Runners?
4. Seiler, 2010 – What is best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes?
5. Tønnessen et al., 2024 – Training Session Models in Endurance Sports: A Norwegian Perspective on Best Practice Recommendations
6. Laursen, 2010 – Training for intense exercise performance: high-intensity or high-volume training?
7. Billat et al., 1999 – Interval training at VO2max: effects on aerobic performance and overtraining markers
8. Tønnessen et al., 2020 – Influence of Interval Training Frequency on Time-Trial Performance in Elite Endurance Athletes
9. Seiler, Sylta, 2017 – How Does Interval-Training Prescription Affect Physiological and Perceptual Responses?