Where Have I Been? Skate XC: 200m repeats

One year later at Swedetown.  Mom sat and read while Kirsten and I went mountain biking.

Where I have been

Hello, long neglected blog.  I've decided to keep a record of stuff here again.   I apologize to any readers that have looked for entries.

The news is that Kirsten is permanently back in the U.P. with me, yay!  She is retired from the State and works in the piano tuning business with me.

Sports-wise, let's see.  CrossFit during the week.  A lot of mountain biking; that's Kirsten's favorite.  Some road biking, too.  We didn't get in much rowing, only a handful of times;  I hope to make a bigger commitment next summer.  I did some running this fall, but my form has turned to poo.  I thought I was doing o.k., but my heels were hurting.  A video analysis revealed that I was heel striking.  In minimalist shoes that's a bad idea.  Fortunately the weather rescued me - 24" of snow in two days.  The season is on!

Now that the snow has arrived, it's about time to get to work.

Back to our regularly scheduled program

So.  Winter arrives, all in the space of two days.  Kirsten and I got in several skis.  The snow was great! 20F, rolled, although a bit soft so that it tended to give way a bit. Here's the list:

• 11/11/14 MTU

5.73k
43:07

• 11/13/14 MTU

2.8k
18:33

• 11/15/14 Swedetown

5.74k
44:14

That was a nice start; now it's time to start workouts.  Last week on a long drive to Wisconsin, Kirsten and I talked about what we wanted to do sports-wise.  We set a couple of goals and cooked up a training plan. Something that will prepare us for races.  Something we can recover from.  Something that will work with my schedule. We also want to do some classic skiing.

The Goal

• 1/24/15 Noquemanon 24k freestyle
• 3/7/15  Great Bear Chase 25k freestyle

The Plan

• Crossfit twice during the week.

Alternating weekends, either:

• Skate xc: short intervals.
• Skate xc: long effort.

-or-

• Skate xc: Long intervals.
• Classic xc: tour for fun.

Seeing it in print, it doesn't look like enough.  We will have to see if intensity can replace volume.

Today

MTU Trails: 35F, groomed, packed, slower 'snowball' snow.

• Warmup lap of Birch
• Drills:

hop, no poles
hop, mime poling on one side

• 200m repeats until form/pace deteriorates. We used the front of the Core loop, heading slightly uphill.

We both got in 3 before crying "uncle."

Figuring out the timer made for some variation, but here are my times:

1:32
1:08
1:05

I guess form gave out first.

There, that's up to date.  Whew!  Just one more new item, but that will have to wait until next post. Ooh, a teaser!