Getting There

After a really good summer and fall of training, my winter was sidelined by a very persistent cold and sinus problems for about 5 weeks after Thanksgiving. This meant that, since I had been focusing almost entirely on base training all summer and fall, that I arrived at my first race weekend (Soldier Hollow of all places) with nearly no speed work under my belt at all. This was readily apparent in my ability to recover quite quickly on the downhills, and inability to go hod a strong pace all the way up the hills. I have also realized how much a complete lack of speed and strength has affected my core strength. This weekend at Snow Mountain Ranch I felt like the things getting the most tired weren't my legs and arms, but my breathing muscles and core. Weird. Solution? Lots of intervals. Right now I have enough time to do about 2 hard workouts a week between races, and I am taking a gamble and almost completely cutting distance skis from my schedule. I feel like my base training has that covered pretty well, now I just need to work on VO2 and lactate clearance. So after Soldier Hollow I skied hard classic intervals in the middle of the week, and then raced at Snow Mountain Ranch. It definately went better than SoHo, with my second best skate race ever in terms of percentage points, and best in USSA points because it was an interval start. The classic race was not as good, but it was the first time I've been able to finish a classic race hard in a couple years due to some technique related back injuries.

 After Snow Mountain, I rested a day, and then did some hard intervals Tuesday morning, it was about 2 degrees at Happy Jack. By the end of them, although I could tell my legs were still a little tired from the race weekend, I felt much better in terms of being able to hold a strong pace for more than just a couple minutes. It was a very good feeling, one which I haven't had in a while. After that, I went to the weight room in the afternoon and worked on my core strength, which I feel is improving as well. 

Hopefully, with this continued improvement, I will be able to have a couple good races by the end of the year. My current goal is to be under 10% back from the leaders of the NCAA races, this would give me both the best  finish by a UW skier since it became a club, as well as put into roughly the top 100 in the USSA points list. With luck, health, and good preparation, I think I can make that happen. 

Joe