The plan for the day was to drive out to Red Rocks and do stair intervals, but it appears that the one high school in the Denver Metro area that isn't graduating at DU yesterday and today had booked the amphitheater for their commencement ceremony. So, the coach decided that we would head out to Falcon park, about a five minute drive away, with a sweet uphill trail system. Once we got there, we ran uphill for thirty minutes for our warmup, I was pretty stoked that I was able to stay in zone one the whole time on the warmup and keep up with all the DU guys. After the warmup we did a zone 4 interval ladder, 1-2-3-4-3-2-1. This was pretty rough stuff, with enough guys to push the pace the whole way that they only got faster throughout. On the first one we all stayed together, on the second one the DU coach tore past us and gapped Havard Selseng and I by about 20 meters by the time we finished. At the start of the third, Havard yells that we can't let him win another, so I dropped the hammer and didn't look back until Havard came around me with about 30 seconds to go, and it was just the two of us. The rest of the intervals were the same, with Havard and I gapping everyone else, with me leading until about 30-45 seconds to go, at which point Havard would lead until the finish. On the very last interval I managed to push hard enough that Havard couldn't come around, and I actually gapped him by a bit at the end, a damn good finish to my two day hard block! Afterwards, as we were coming down, I got some pretty inspiring comments from Havard, who is a total badass. He is Norwegian, as you might be able to tell from the name, and quite fast. We were having a conversation about trying to lose some extra body fat which we had both accumulated thanks to "college diets" (read: beer). As we talked about it he said to me "if you ski as fast as you run, it isn't hurting you." To which I said something to the affect of "well you kick the crap out of me on skis." He gave me a surprised look and said "Well you've definitely got the endurance, so it will come soon." Yes!!! It's awesome to see that my work finally seems to be paying off, enough that a truly elite skier thinks I can be really fast! I'm pretty exited about the training camp and all that we've done, and especially how I've handled two of the hardest training sessions in years on two consecutive days with really fast guys.
Here's to hard work.
Joe
You rock Joe!
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