Week 25
· Oct 22, 03:27 PM
Last week was fairly typical of what I expect for the fall. Volume is down a bit, spenst and intensity are up. Now is the time of year when all workouts are not created equal. Specifically, the time for aerobic gains is pretty much gone. All indications are that I made some seriously good progress on my engine from May through late August. September was a bit of a transitional month where hopefully I didn’t lose much, and now I’m at the point where it’s time to start getting ready to race. We’re barely a month away from the first races in West Yellowstone, and since they’re not going to be heart rate limited, it’s probably time to start getting used to putting out some higher efforts and suffering a little more.
Monday: Off. I was going to skate, but was just a little too tired left over from the weekend in Corvallis.
Tuesday: 1.6 Easy Skate. 2 Classic with intervals. We did a bit of a mix of intervals due to trouble with van coordination and getting rides back down Awbrey. Each interval day is feeling a little bit better than the last, which is a good sign I suppose. They’re still getting mighty tough to hang with the other guys at the end though.
Wednesday: Skate 4.2. Almost an OD. My legs were absolutely fried, and I felt like I was grinding through for a lot of it. HRs were a little higher than this summer, and I think I was skiing along okay, but the really good sensations weren’t there. Well, they came occasionally in the last hour. Hmmm…
Thursday: Run w/spenst 1.25. First real spenst day of the year, and there’s a TT tomorrow. I might pay.
Friday: 2.5 Skate. Century TT. 23:49. So I’m 2:25 slower than I was in August. Or conditions made a difference. It’s hard to know. On days when the TT course changes so dramatically (wind and wet pavement), it really makes for a meaningless test. I’m not discounting the value of the workout (it was a tough effort, and a miserable day to do it), but comparing times? Hard to do. All the V2A down low was actually V2, and I seriously contemplated breaking into a V1 on the uphills. I had no ability to power over the top of anything. HRs not that high, 177 average.
Saturday: 1.5 Run. Half an inch of snow in town! What am I supposed to do with that? Ran easy at Shevlin Park. Ever since I finished that spenst my legs have felt like someone beat on them with a baseball bat (that oh-so-familiar feeling from PT this spring). 1.1 Easy classic. Just skiing around, relaxed before the game.
Sunday: 2.5 Classic. Real skiing again. Much more snow than last time, started off as nice powder and quickly went to cement. A very needed mental switch though. One of those “this is why we do it” sort of days. Some skiing, a few bad turns, a fair bit of hiking with skis, and double poling up Century to finish it off.
YTD: 17.65/34.9/420.55
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