An Epic
· May 10, 05:34 PM
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Recovery Week
· Mar 30, 03:59 PM
It’s now been a week since my season finished with 50k in the Callaghan Valley. Since then the closest thing I’ve done that resembles training is riding my bike to work. And I’ve only done that once – on the day there wasn’t snow in town. It’s definitely been a week of inactivity, but one I certainly needed. I’ve been getting in some time at the office (off today though) and not doing much else.
The good news is I’m starting to feel a little bored and antsy. I almost have some spring in my step. I barely feel my legs walking up stairs anymore, and in another few days I might be ready for a little bit of activity. The only goals I have for the next month (April) are to get totally recovered and be ready to go at the beginning of May when it’s time to get ready for next year.
Right now I’m watching live splits of the 50k in Fairbanks. Not wishing that I was racing at all, but Violett’s having a good one, at least through the first 25. If he holds on he’ll be National Champ, which would be pretty cool!
A Good Week
· Mar 9, 10:48 AM
Well, I have to give Mt. Bachelor credit – they’ve made phenomenal skiing this week. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call it the best skiing and grooming of the season (with the probably exception of Soldier Hollow), so I’ve been pretty pleased. The sunny skies and temps going from 20 at 8 to 40 at 11 haven’t hurt things either. Makes for pretty perfect classic skiing on violet like kick wax for an hour and a half or so each day. Then I throw a t-shirt on and drive back to town.
Return of the Blog
· Mar 2, 08:40 PM
As you may have guessed, I haven’t had much to say on the skiing or ski racing front for the last few weeks, so I haven’t bothered. The Owl Creek Chase was as hard and bad a race as I’ve had in a long time and I was pretty much ready to call off the season at that point. Well, really what I wanted to do was to hit reset, but the reset button takes 6-8 weeks and that would have left me in a good position to get ready for the last races of the year right about April 1 … just after the last races of the year. So instead, I’m in a bit of a holding pattern. Sort of reset, but mostly trying to give me the best chance possible to be fast in March.
A large part of the plan has been trying to get recovered, because my biggest problem this season has been recovery. Usually I like the second day of two-day weekends, or the second weekend of race series. Not this year. After floating a lot of possible explanations all season through January, the best one we (the collective group I’m analyzing training and racing with) can come up with is that I overdid it a little this summer and fall. Not overdone a lot I don’t think, but just enough so that every time I get a few solid workouts in and feel like I should be getting myself ready for a good string of racing I end up tired with no go instead.
Since Owl Creek I’ve been on the hour and a half a day/one intensity a week plan. It’s hard to say if it’s working. The Birkie was definitely interesting. Much slower pace than last time I skied it, and we brought a pack of 30 up to about 30k. It was a real mess skiing out there. Broken poles, people skiing like donkeys, impossible to move in the pack and all that. Basically everyone was waiting on Babikov, and it took him three tries to get clear, but he finally did. I was great until about 38k, then my triceps started to spasm. I skied the long gradual uphill to Bitch Hill basically legs only, drank my entire third feed, and then had to hammer over Bitch Hill. At that point my arms stopped seizing, but I’d shot my legs too, so the last 10ks were a matter of faking it. I made the cut for 2-9 when Babikov went, but it came back together on the lake and I had no game in the sprint. I kept telling myself I should be going faster, but just couldn’t do it.
I did my first post-Birkie intensity today, classic intervals. I haven’t gone hard on classic skis since the race in Aspen 3.5 weeks ago, and I didn’t feel real comfortable out there. Given that there are 3.5 classic races out of 5 in the second half of the month I’d best fix that I think. My legs are pretty tired now and I feel like I went hard. The idea is to take tomorrow off and hopefully bounce back well enough for a light speed day on Thursday. If that all goes well then I think a TT Sunday or Monday, another speed session before Canadian Nationals and then truly race and rest.
We’ll see how it goes, sure would be nice to finish with something decent.
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A Cold Weekend
· Jan 20, 04:53 PM
It was about 0 when we finished skiing today, and 0, sunny and calm felt pretty balmy. That’s because we skied in the 10 -5 range yesterday. There’s a big difference. My face was much colder yesterday than today. Classic skied both days, because skating can be too painfully slow with that much squeaking and it was nice. Been doing some training for the greatest show on snow, and I made better progress today. Yesterday I pushed fresh powder into old tracks and made it almost 10k in an hour. Today, with fresh tracks it was more like 14kph.
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Baby Steps
· Jan 9, 01:09 PM
I went to bed Sunday night thinking I’d successfully kicked my cold. I had sinus pressure all day watching the sprint relays, but things had moved out of my throat, which is always a good sign. I went to bed pretty early (missed Lars’s birthday party for the sake of my health!) and promptly woke up with sinus pressure and a sore throat and some stuff in my lungs. Not cool.
I combined that feeling with some 30 hours of travel to get back to Bend (a night in San Francisco with Oakley was part of that), which sounds awful, but since I keep getting voicemails from United’s rebooking service (which still thinks I’m in Wausau, WI) because they keep canceling flights, I’m feeling alright about it. Anyways, the combination was not something to make me feel good about anything yesterday afternoon.
But, this morning I woke up with no sinus pressure and no sore throat. I’m still a little stuffed up and I definitely still have crap in my lungs, but this feels much better. One more day off then I think I can do some easy training for the rest of the week. The Nordeen is out for this weekend. It’s time for redemption in the midwest.
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Not Always Easy
· Dec 22, 03:20 PM
I find it pretty easy to come up with blog posts when things are going well. Training is usually interesting enough to write about, and it’s easy to talk about races and tests when they’re good – or bad – as long as there’s a reason. That said, December has been tough. I’ve done three races, and the only one that was anywhere close to expectations was the one I don’t care about (the classic sprint in Bozeman). The other two have been 15K skates, and they’ve been downright bad.
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