Nordic (skating) intervals 1:15:00 [5] 15.81 km (4:45 / km)
Wow, 4x4s, its been a while. Back to Goldbar for Wednesday night FT training, with a sweet group! A big change from last year, where it was only me. Now, we had 6 people out, who I'm pretty sure all said they're going to come every week from now on.
Anyway, 4x4s, a pretty brutal workout, working on VO2Max, straight up. Blast your ass off for 4 minutes, then try to recover. I actually think I was probably going too hard, it felt like a sprint effort. Still, I also feel like it may just be my own change in body size that's made me ski differently. I think my tempo is much higher, but the power (especially in the arms) has gone way down. I feel lighter and snappier, whereas before I was much more of a huge force kind of skier. I wish there some real sprint races I could enter to test myself, but the only way to do that is to go to a NorAm, and I don't have the fitness to make the heats, so it would be a $40 entry fee for a 3 minute race. That'd be lame.
I'm also trying very, very hard to concentrate on pushing myself harder. I believe I've mentioned this before, but I think my pain tolerance sucks. So I really, really consciously yell at myself to go harder, if it hurts, "GO F***** HARDER". If I have to shout it out loud, I will. As with all sport psychology, it needs to be trained, and in the case of self-talk, it can never hurt to verbalize your goal thoughts first, to maximize impact. I would hope that over time the mere thought would be sufficient.
For instance, tonight I got my HR up to 177! So close to 180! That'd be a huge achievement, effort-wise, I think.