Training Log Archive: W

Did a long-esque run in the cold weather. Decided to suck it up and run in the -19. But, since its below my cut-off of -18 for outdoor intensity (scientifically, not personally), the speed was definitely lower. Took mainly the singletrack stuff along the river which was good fun and unstable and inefficient. Good stuff.

When I was out I thought back to that Birkebeiner in 2009 where we raced at -23, and wondered what I was possibly thinking at the time. Amusingly, one of my boots came untied after the first 6k, and the other one I tied too tight, because after 15 my toes had not at all thawed out, so I leaned down and untied it too and skied the next 40k with untied ski boots. My feet were not at all happy about that one.

Couldn't convince anyone else to join me for a cold weather work, and I couldn't even convince myself to go outside.

I have a strange gap in my training data on my garmin. I have no data for this day, and so I can' t honestly remember what I did that day. Odds are, because of that, then, I rode my trainer for an hour. I don't use my garmin for trainer riding, so that's probably it. I was aware that I wouldn't really be able to train Saturday due to work and then the club AGM. Disappointing that I'm not going to be able to hit my goal hours of training this week due to excessive amounts of unplanned work as well as the cold weather.

But, those are just excuses, I have to a) wake up earlier, and b) suck it up.

Spun on the trainer, which is already getting super boring. But, its -19.

Followed up a night shift at the shop with some crossfit style strength. One minute of Push-ups, Sit-ups, Dips, Box Jumps, and Pull-ups, which one minute break in between x 2 sets. I actually thought we were going to do three sets, but, apparently nope, 2 is the deal. Oh well. Reminder how weak my arms are these days.

Made a beeline straight from soccer to FT training intervals. Edmonton had a blizzard in the middle of day of up to 20cm, so guess which ski area wasn't groomed! Hint: All of them.

Strangely, I actually appreciated the feature that most people think is the highlight of having hole skis, the fact that the snow flows straight throw the hole and they're easier to lift out of ankle deep snow. And they were! Whodathunkit? But really, how often does that happen.

5 x 4 minute intervals at 110% of race pace with 3 minutes strength. The loop we did got better as we self-groomed it, but it was still a tough slog. A firm base underneath made it good ski, but just lifting up the skis was tough, and it was still a bit of a slog and pretty slow. Really tried to focus on efficiency and a light step. I am not a light guy, unfortunately.

Morning spin in light of the cold cold! Yeah, its only, like -15, but I'm a summer athlete now.

(aka a pansy)

On the other hand, the plan for the evening was definitely to head down to Victoria for some ski-specific strength. Rotated between skating, legs only, and arms only x 2 sets, for a total of six laps, then switched to the other side for a few loops of the short loop. Some solid glide to be had tonight, felt very brisk on my skis for a while there.

I suspect its less my fitness and more my skis.

I was about to cut this run much shorter, since it was -15 and dark and I am tired of training alone, but I just kept on plugging and did the loop I was going to do, and a.... relatively brisk pace. It started to wear on me by the end, for sures. Once again I look at Julian's log and see that before he was injured he was doing "easy runs" in the form of 1:07 for 15.37k, so the same loop I just did but 20 minutes faster.

Maybe living in Sweden just inspires a person to run faster. *sigh*

C • dark, darker, darkest 11