TL;DR: The guy who won both the 10k and the 5k skating events at the Olympics documents his training regime, which boils down to staggering amounts of aerobic exercise on bikes and on the skating rink. A typical week involves 5 days in a row of 7 hours on a bike.
As an aside, I always thought from the name that he must be originally Dutch, but nope, he's a third-generation Swede; the name comes from his grandfather.
I read an interview with him last week that I found pretty funnny. It said he only does two skating sessions: 5k at world record pace and 10k at world record pace. When he goes for long bike rides he finds a kebab shop that’s really far away and goes to try it. Also he’s probably quitting skating for the 3rd time after the olympics (cause he thinks there are better things to do).
Just to add: he has always said that after the Olympics he is retiring (at age 25). He has not confirmed it as far as I know, but he has hinted at it in interviews and also in this document. He basically took the long distances in speed skating by storm, and is now doing a massive mic drop.
He has said in interviews after winning his two gold medal that he's going to try to stop, but since he tried that two times before, there's a 20% chance he'll be back.
He also said he doesn't know what he's going to do the next few years, but that there are a few ultra runs he still wants to do.
> As an aside, I always thought from the name that he must be originally Dutch, but nope, he's a third-generation Swede; the name comes from his grandfather.
I assumed that too. It's surprisingly common to see long distance (5k and 10k) skaters with Dutch names competing for other countries. Quite often it's someone who emigrated or who is half-Dutch. Occasionally it's strategic: Bart Veldkamp moved to Belgium so he could more easily qualify for the longer distances without having to compete with massive numbers of Dutch skaters on the shorter distances.
I believe Nils' Dutch grandfather moved to Sweden and married a Hungarian woman there. Nils is all Swedish, though.
As an aside, I always thought from the name that he must be originally Dutch, but nope, he's a third-generation Swede; the name comes from his grandfather.