Travel day phenomenon

Nov. 14, 2010

Training: Nov. 13. Easy recovery skate. Total time: 1.5hr
              Nov. 14. Travel day Shake out run. Total time: 40mins

     I always seem to build a lot of anxiety before travel days because even though I have traveled much more than the average person, I don't travel well. By the end of the flights and drives, I am tense from sitting in awkward positions and generally grumpy from lack of sleep. It was hard to think that anything would be different, because as usual I was not very psyched to get on the plane. I didn't sleep well the night before and was already tired. Thankfully, Mark had an extra pair of ear plugs and so I could at least drown out the engine groans. After making fun of him for needing a sleep aid before travel, Mark handed me a melatonin pill and even though I figured it wouldn't do much, I took it anyway. We boarded the plane, I sat down, and I was out cold. I woke up to hear the intercom informing people to have their seats and tray tables up for landing .

     Alive was not the best way to describe me trolling from one gate to the next. I really must have been out hard because I hardly remember a thing from being in Seattle. Mark said it was just the 2mg tablet, but you would have thought I took the entire bottle. I slept through our layover on a bench and immediately after boarding the second plane, I was out again for the duration. I wasn't in much better shape consciously on the other end, but I think that with sleeping through the flights, the anxiety and tension I typically have was reduced. The puddle jumper to Steamboat was much the same as I passed out quickly and awoke just before landing.

     We arrived in a winter wonderland of snow with heavy snow still falling and a forecast calling for much more. The touring center down in town has a scheduled opening for tomorrow and with the new snow, could be something wonderful. Mark and I went for a short run to loosen up the legs and to get a quick reminder that we were at altitude now. I am comforted that we will have a solid 10 days of acclimation before racing starts. The season has begun and  we are going to start racing!!!

A Great Day

Nov. 12, 2010

Training: Nov. 8,9 : Off days for recovery week
              Nov. 10: Easy L1-2 classic ski. Total time: 2hr
              Nov. 11: Easy L1 skate ski. Total time: 2hr
              Nov. 12: Classic L4 intervals. Total time: 2hr

     What a difference a few days can make! After last Sunday, it was easy to have doubts about the season especially when skiing back to the car felt like climbing Mt. Everest. Thankfully the two days spent recovering and catching up on some needed sleep helped bring my body back to life and rejuvenated my spirits. With some nice grooming at the hillside trail system on Wednesday, Mark and I had a very pleasant morning stroll on our skis to bring the bodies back into training mode. Two days off is enough to throw us off kilter a bit, so its good to start moving the blood again.
     Yesterday was an amazing day though. I took a drive home to Soldotna because I was invited to speak at a  Rotary meeting and because I was and still am in the market to find sponsors for my racing, this was a good opportunity to talk with some hometown businesses. I am always surprised how relaxed I feel when I drive into town. Its as if the busy lifestyle I live in Anchorage seems to disappear and I resort back to this grade school-like happiness of not having any REAL stress. Just comfort people I suppose.
     I was excited to be able to give a short presentation at the Rotary giving information on many of the great potential investments in the local ski community and I was surprised to find how receptive the group was. I forget  that even though I have yet to qualify for a World Championship or Olympic team, I have had a lot of success in athletics compared to most coming out of our small community and I can have some influence when speaking at home. Nonetheless, I was happy to be there and glad I could help promote our local ski programs. We have a lot of great people involved with our Rotary club in Soldotna and am not surprised that our community programs have grown and prospered through the help of such clubs.
     The Soldotna community itself still blows my mind as well. Perhaps I'm seeing things from a newer perspective, but the huge amount of support and accolades I received from our community was simply astonishing. I would like to send a very sincere thanks out to Tom Seggerman of TDS Construction and Mike Sweeney of Sweeney's Clothing for the support they have given and a special thanks to Justin Moore of Justin Moore Orthodontics and Dennis and Sandra Ghormley for their support as well. With communities like mine, I get so fired up to contribute back and I look forward to doing so this winter and winters to come. I will not be surprised if we begin to see a lot more Soldotna kids kicking my butt and achieving greater things than I, especially with the expert grooming from Bill Holt and the Tsalteshi trail crew. The trails in Soldotna are some of the finest in Alaska with the terrain out there, I wont be surprised to see some bigger caliber races there in the future.
      Beyond yesterdays great success, todays workout was equally exciting. Mark and I took off for some L4 intervals on a course with three substantial climbs. We switched leads each interval and each rotation got progressively faster. On the second to last interval I found myself having to dig deep and really grit my teeth to stay on the back of Mark, who perhaps had faster skis but I wont make excuses, and hit the highest heart-rate I think I've seen in L4 intervals. I buried myself a bit, but I kept the final interval in check and finished just a few seconds behind Mark. Going hard feels good. I was so jazzed after the workout today that my chocolate milk afterwards was drank with ferociousness. Those are the intervals that get you tough and I am now excited to race.

Man oh Man, Stick the fork in me

Nov. 5-7, 2010

Training: Nov. 5 : Distance skate with speeds. Total time: 2hr
Training Nov. 6 : Easy distance skate. Total time: 1.5hr
Training Nov. 7 : Over distance skate. Total time: 2.5 hr


     Man oh man, my body has definitely found a breaking point. I didn't feel quite as refreshed as I could have after Thursdays recovery day, but feeling a bit tired is never out of the ordinary for me this time of year. I started the ski on Friday like any other and kept the pace pretty easy to allow my body to get underneath me before I started the sprints, which were roughly 8x30secs in length. The first couple sprints went pretty well, but I was having to really bring the pace back afterwards to allow the heart rate to drop back down again. It was after the the 7th sprint or so, maybe an hour fifteen into the workout that some switches in my body seemed to turn off. My balance seemed to be that if I had just taken back a couple shots of tequila and my breathing rate could have passed for a dog that had just ran as fast as he could in high heat. This was well after the sprint too mind you as my body was in easy mode. I wasn't going too fast between the sprints, but i was relegated to a walk at this point. I'm confident that your body does have a kill switch in there somewhere.... and I hit it. For what might have taken me ten minutes to get back to the car took a solid 30 or so. There would be no run that night.
     With two sprint time trials the next day, I felt torn as to what I should do. These are important workouts to do at this time of year, but if I was smart and payed attention to the body it would be beneficial to relax the next couple of days and let things come back to life again. Talking with the coach, we decided to see how my body felt in the morning and make the call then. I have a hard time saying no when there could be suffering involved, but there is a difference betweennsuffering when the body is moving well and suffering with a suffering body. These are two very different scenarios when taking into account the mental game involved. Feeling healthy, the suffering will generally produce a positve feeling, while feeling crappy and suffering, can really put you out of the game and doubting fitness can creep in.
     When I woke the next morning (Saturday) I wasn't surprised that I didn't want to get out of bed. I had taken a pretty bad fall on the dreary ski back to the car the day before and more things felt out of whack than I would consider normal. I made the hard but necessary call to take it easy and not TT. I went out for a fairly short 90 minutes and crawled along the nicely rolled out hillside trails. While skiing, I was comforted in knowing that if i had tried to TT, I would be disqualified for delay of race because getting out of first gear was seemingly impossible.
     After a quick shower and feed, i was off to work and like most Saturdays, the Raven was excessively busy. The mental fatigue from busy work and the body being at a point of distress, I was feeling pretty wigged out by the end of the day. Its really easy to think negatively when the body is in that state and questioning whether or not its worth it to keep skiing is always the first topic in your head. There have been a lot of things on my plate recently and it was all feeling pretty heavy. I really just wanted to sit down and stare into space for a few days. The bright side was that a couple of customers that had come in just before closing  and were going to miss a bluegrass concert at the Atwood Concert Hall for some reason and they gave me their two tickets. I called my girlfriend and off we went right after work. The concert was fantastic and I felt as though a spark of life had come back mentally.
      Although I had a rough nights sleep last night, my body had actually moved a bit better today during the OD workout. I kept it pretty easy and tried not to stress anything. My body still feels really tired, but thankfully I will start my recovery week tomorrow meaning a couple days off followed by a couple easy skis. This is a good time to catch up on needed sleep and general rest for the body. I have never been so excited to do nothing. I have two weeks until the racing starts and I want my body to feel fresh and my mind to be positive, both of which come with time spent relaxing and building energy levels back up. I have done great work this summer and its time for the body to catch up and soak it all in.
    

Snow is wet

Nov. 4, 2010

Training: AM easy classic ski. Total time: 2hr
              PM easy run. Total time 1hr

     So its true, believe it or not, snow is wet. I know this because I experienced it first hand. It looked like snow and felt like snow, but today I looked as if I was sprayed down with a fire hose after I finished my easy workout. Im sure it was a combine effort of my sweat trying to get out and the snow which is wet, trying to get in, but I could have wrung my jacket out and quenched the thirst of a lost man in the desert.
     I had a wonderful workout today, but as usual for Thursdays, the strength workout the night before caught up to me and began to drag my feet a bit. I'm not getting as sore after strength as I used to, but the late nights at the gym still suck the body dry of energy. There is always a price to pay when you want to get huge. Theres always a give and take. I
     I don't have much inspiration today to draw off of, so i will simply leave you with a little movie Mark put together from our trip up to Hatchers this weekend.

OOOF!

Nov. 3, 2010

Training: AM Sub-race pace 15k. Total time: 2hr
              PM Run with strength. Total time: 1 hr

     Well we were able to ski at hillside this morning and to be honest I was quite skeptical of how the conditions would be. I was surprised to find that the skiing was quite good considering the fairly minimal coverage. We hit a few rocks of course, but apart from a few sections, we could ski without trepidation.
      I actually wasn't sure what the workout was going to be today, so I was excited to hear that the workout was to be 3 x double bubble with spencer 5k loop, which is essentially 15k. I have always loved these kinds of workouts. The effort is geared towards capacity building, meaning the pace is to be just below race pace. This is the pace where you are going hard enough to be building lactate (light flooding) in the body, but staying just under the point where your body starts to break down. So its basically going as hard as you can while maintaining comfortable form. The effort is not meant to really stress the body like races can do, but still get that really hard workout feeling afterwards.
     The workout for the most part went well for me. My plan was to ski negative splits on the laps and I accomplished that. The disappointing part in my mind was that my body movements still felt slow. A lot of this has to do with the transition from dryland to snow, but naturally I want my body to do what i want it to now. Having not spend as much time as others on my roller-skis this summer also adds to partial inefficiency in my movements. These will work themselves out with more time on skis, but it still creates frustration.
     These workouts at this time of year are hard on a skier mentally. A skier will tend to gauge his or her own fitness on these workouts with the season only weeks away. The trouble with this is that there is a lot of training buildup in the bodies and some of these workouts might just end up being sub par for what the athlete feels their training should show. This can play with the mental game a lot and I fall into that limbo as well every season. Even though i recognize that my body is just tired, I still try and set goals for myself and when i don't feel they have been met, I get bummed out. Thinking about it now, I realize that I have been training without a recovery week since the week after Trans-Alps. 7 1/2 weeks of solid training without a recovery week. I guess I will wait and see what happens at the end of the week with two sprint TT's coming up and really enjoy the recovery week that follows. That might just be what my body needs at this point. Time to let the great workouts I've put in soak into the body. I love epiphanies!

Snow on my car...... Snow on my car

Nov. 2, 2010

Training: AM Distance ski skate with speeds. Total time: 2hr
              PM easy distance run. Total time: 45mins

Oh snow on my car, so white on the hood
So peaceful, so fresh, to touch you I could
But I shant, not right now, I will watch you and smile
And sip from my coffee that lasts me a while

Oh snow on my car, the first sign of season
Why I'm so happy, I have not a reason
I hope that you stay, I pray that you wait
For with my blessed season, you are my fate


        I woke up to snow on the ground this morning. Hooray for mother nature finally getting the ball rolling! It was comical to witness the incapableness of Alaskan drivers on the way to APU to catch the Van up to Hatchers. So many accidents caused by  those that fail to relate the white stuff in the sky and on the roads with slippery.  But such was it that it also took us about a half hour longer to get up to Hatchers.
        It was still snowing when we started skiing and the overnight snow had left about 4" of fresh snow for us to plow through. We were happy enough to do so still living in the excitement of being on snow, but plowing the way gets pretty old as the season starts to motor through. At any rate, after a few laps the trail was getting skied in and was getting faster and easier to ski. I of course started getting excited and began to ski harder than i should have. Mark had passively asked if I was going L2 and having not put on my heartrate monitor this morning, I had no idea. Judging by his panting, I was clearly entering the L3 zone and pushing the pace. Not that this is anything new, but I cant help getting excited this time of year.
       I was a bit late to work due to the road conditions going to and from Hatchers, but thankfully it hadn't been too busy. I made ammence by bringing in a Pumpkin Pie I had made that was left over from the Thanksgiving at Marks. And as luck would have it, we had a can of whipped cream in the back fridge. I don't think anyone could complain about anything if whipped cream was involved!
     I finished the night off with a nice 45 minute jaunt from the house. The roads were getting pretty icy at 8pm when I took off, so i'm pretty sure I got in some good ski technique in there as well. My girlfriend had spaghetti cooking when I returned home and at that point I was happy to just sit down. The days seem long this time of year, but its probably just that the light hours are shorter. Oh well, another day of good training in the bank.

Simplicity

Nov. 1, 2010

Training: Recovery Day. Total Time: 0hr

     I love it when one of your childhood heroes continues to blow your mind even years later.  Since I was a kid, Thomas Alsgaard was my favorite skier and I followed his results and accomplishment more than any other skier. He was a man that to me always seemed to have a fight in him when racing. Some of the best ski race finishes I can remember involve the towering Alsgaard obviously digging down and narrowly beating great competitors. In fact, when I was racing in high school I would write motivational phrases or names on the back a big orange vest I skied with and "Thomas Alsgaard" was for sure one of the most motivating for me.  I was excited to find that fasterskier posted an interview with Thomas today. Here are a couple excerpts:

FS: The U.S. has made great strides in recent years, with top skiers like Kikkan Randall, Andy Newell and Kris Freeman posting strong results.  But there is still a long way to go.  What do you see as the most important considerations for a country like the U.S., where skiing is not a mainstream sport?

Alsgaard on his way to gold in 1994

TA: You have a lot of talents, and I think all of the cross-country world would like to see the U.S. with even stronger results. I don’t know much about the philosophy of training in the U.S., but I think you have all you need. Just make everything simple. Forget all the tiny little details, and focus on the hard work

FS: What is it that separates the greats like Bjorn Daehlie, Petter Northug, and yourself from the rest of the very good skiers?

TA: A lot of skiers train basically the same, and are equally strong during summer and autumn. Still, it can be a huge different between them in a very important race. So maybe it’s not the fitness but the head that makes some athletes winners?

     I agree with Alsgaard in both responses. Although I do believe that technique work is always needed, there is a point where you just have to put your head down and just go train. To be out on your feet and to simply get fit. There are all sorts of different training philosophies out there on how to get fast and reach a performance peak and I'm sure most if not all work in one way or another. The "little details" though are what bog some skiers down. Those details will differ from one person to the next, but I feel like for some skiers, the bombardment of technique work, nutrition, etc.. takes away from the whole experience of just putting yourself out there and making it hurt. I am reminded of the movie "Rocky IV" where Rocky flies out to somewhere in middle-of-nowhere Russia and just trains super hard. He removed the distractions and simply make himself tough. Even if it was just a Hollywood ending, the idea is there.

     "So maybe it’s not the fitness but the head that makes some athletes winners?". I like this quote because it makes sense to me. The mental game really is a big part of competition at all levels. Competing for jobs, women (or men depending on the reader), friends, fights, etc. Those that are tough upstairs are always hard to beat. Im not the toughest, but I like to think that I am fairly stable mentally.....at least when it comes to racing. I rarely lose my cool in races which is perhaps why my good and my bad races don't show significant variances. I am though always trying to find ways to make myself mentally tougher . There is always room for improvement at any level. I haven't won a World Cup medal or even made an Olympic squad yet, so there is definitely room for improvement here. More training doesn't always do the trick either although for some it might, but sometimes you have to search elsewhere for it. For me it was the Trans-Alps.
     You can pull from other aspects of your life too. I love the pain I experience during mountain races and I like to transfer the mental toughness to my ski racing. Posting solid times on climbs each year here in Alaska does a lot for me. Reminding myself that I run up mountains and occasionally win gives me plenty of draw even with ski races. It simply makes me feel tough. Thats all its takes sometimes to make a win or have a great result. If you feel like your tougher than your competitor is next to you, you might be compelled to dig further and hurt more.
     There are ups and downs with everyone during a race season... or in life for that matter, but its constantly finding things to keep the mental toughness up and motivation high  that creates the successful individual. I'm not perfect by any means, but I'm still here racing and finding better results each year. I'm happy and thankful that i'm at least still moving forward.