Today is a beautiful day in the upper Midwest and a fantastic day to be on the ski trails. It is about 28 degrees and sunny. After three to four inches of snow the past couple of nights the Elver Park trails were in terrific shape. They were well-groomed, and I encountered very little ice and even fewer people.This year's Birkie is tomorrow, and next year's race is 366 days away. Today made things very obvious-I have some work in front of me. This was my longest ski of the year - just over 10 km, and it took just under an hour. One year from tomorrow I will need to ski five times further than I went today. That is one scary thought. Today I struggled often, yet stayed focused on my strides and my breathing and was able to hang in there until the end. Considering that next February I hope to ski the 50 km in about four hours, I am not even close to where I want to be.
But most importantly I have a plan: live an active lifestyle. Keep getting outside, keep moving, keep gaining strength, keep fighting for fitness.
Kia ora Larry,
ReplyDelete10k's is a good effort mate, particularly when just starting. I know when training for a few marathons back in the day I always ran short and brief during the week and kept a longer run for the weekend. Starting out with 30 minute runs, 1 hour on the weekend and building up the distance to where just before the marathon I was almost running one. The theory being that aiming to ski, or run, to a time rather than so much a distance. When we were training for the Birkie it was a lot of skiing as our aerobic fitness was pretty high back then. I got injured before the race and looking back I think I would have been fit enough, aerobic and strength wise, but the technique, or lack of it, would have done me in. Especially on a few of the monster hills with turns. Anyway mate, be looking forward to following your progress. Raveon!
Cheers,
Robb
Robb,
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't my first ski of the year...probably about the 6th or 7th. But in all the other workouts I did not go this far...always was too tired. Today I will ski again. It may be the last time this year as we are looking at temperatures in the high 30's all week. But then comes the warm weather training and that will be a good change.
Didn't know you actually trained for marathons. Did you finish one?
Take care...
Larry
Kia ora Larry,
ReplyDeleteFinished two actually. 1992 Fox Cities in 3:38, a real watershed experience after a bad breakup and too much hard living, got my shit together and trained for a marathon, and did it.
The next year I had moved to New Zealand and really on just residual fitness did the Rotorua marathon in 1993 in 4:04. Was doing real well and enjoying one of the more picturesque marathons running around Lake Rotorua, when I hit the backside of the lake, and it climbs steeply from 32 to 38 k's, and I had done very little hill training. I hit the wall and blew my time out but was determined to get across the finish line, and did.
I was full on training the next year for it again, when I got tendonitis in my knees, and came to the realization that all these miles on my big frame were not doing my joints any real favours. That cured me of marathons, and makes me wonder how much those 4 years or so of real intensive miles played on my hip.
Cheers,
Robb
Sounds like a good plan to me...
ReplyDelete