Update #1 - 7 Days into the Race Season.

Seven days in to the race season, one race out of the way...

A typical lead in to the first race of the season, which is always in West Yellowstone, MT, involves a minimum of a week on-snow, testing skis and re-adjusting to skiing on snow... This year there was no snow, at least until 4 days before said ski race... My first race was on Saturday. The snow fell on Tuesday. I packed my car and headed up to Montana, arriving late on Wednesday. On Thursday I skied once and waited for my friend and sponsor, Nathan Schultz of Boulder Nordic Sport, to arrive with my race skis - skis i really needed to test before the first ski race... He finally did arrive late on Thursday night. I grabbed my skis and headed back to the hotel, where my service man, Clarke, and I spent a solid three hours preparing the skis for the next day...

Friday was day one on the new skis. We tested them, weeded a few out and decided on two pair that would be best for Saturday's 15k race... Saturday we raced... The race was fine, but not stellar. I finished 10th, which I would generally not be happy about but 50 seconds out seemed like a manageable gap given the lead in to the event... I didn't feel overly coordinated on snow and that made it impossible to really speed into the race... which is nothing more than a consequence of only having two days on snow prior to the race...

Just a portion of the skis I need to figure out...

After the race I had planned to head back to Park City but there is no snow... and I need to ski! I need to test skis and I need to spend time on snow... I'm not far from where I need to be in order to fight for wins... but that difference can only be made up by staying on snow... So here I am in West Yellowstone, by myself.

Town is not exactly busy this time of year...

I have nothing but time on my hands... which means I should be updating this blog a lot but I don't have internet! which is convenient... I have to poach it from a hotel across town.

I will be in Yellowstone until this weekend. After that i will likely head back to Park City for a few days before driving to Bozeman for the next SuperTour...

Screenshot from The Shining, aka The view from my hotel room: The only thing missing from my hotel the kid on the HotWheels tricycle... I'm the only one left.

REAL LIFE

September 2, 2007

The basic principal of training is a simple matter of stress and recovery. We train ourselves as hard as possible, recover from it and subsequently become stronger... Ideal is the case when the entirety of that stress comes from sport specific stimuli alone. But alas, real life always seems want to have a say in my plans.

For the past few days I have been moving. Our lease was up and we (my girlfriend and I) wanted to find a new place to live. When the end of the month came, there was nothing left to do but leave... Easier said than done. A solid ten hours over two days of carrying furniture, boxes, you name it, up and down several flights of stairs is not exactly restful.

Thursday alone involved 2.5 hours of rollerskiing, several hours of hiking with the PE class I work with and a good 5+ hours of ‘weighted stair walking’.

By the time Saturday rolled around, I felt as though I had been run over by a truck. There was no more room for training this week.

I’ve never been a fan of changing my training plan midway through a week but sometimes there is nothing else that can be done. It is often difficult to have the confidence to simply not train but that is in fact the only way out of feeling tired.

Today I am resting, catching up on some emails that I have missed over a few days and trying my hand at furniture arrangement. Thus far the evidence suggests that I am a far better cross-country skier than interior decorator...

July 15, 2007
For the majority of my athletic career I have been told the value of stretching, easing into the training season and the general care for one’s body aside from the usual stress and recovery cycles of my sport… I have never really listened to those warnings. With great luck, I have avoided injury and illness for many years… That was until I resumed my training this spring. I didn’t bother easing into running or rollerskiing, I just jumped right in with several two-hour workouts; couple that with a brand new weight lifting plan that left me hardly able to walk after the first session and I was just asking for problems.

When I went out for my second run of the week on Wednesday, my knee was really sore. I chose to end the session early to avoid aggravating it too much. The following morning I went rollerskiing. My elbow, unused to the impact of asphalt after a winter on snow, started to act up halfway through the workout.

When I got home I called my coach right away. He quickly informed me that I am just getting old and that I finally ought to start listening to his advice…

I backed off a bit and eased back into normal training over the past week. My joints have been adjusting and I should be back on track in no time…

One of these days I’m going to figure out what stretching is all about.