April 2002 Training

FasterSkierDecember 9, 2002


By

Remember why you need to work out!
Well, your vacation and "do whatever you like to do month" of April is over and it’s time to look ahead and prepare for next seasons "big battles". It’s a good idea to think now about which races you are gearing up for – the important events – and roughly plan how to get from here to there. Having made those decisions is a motivational factor that helps you do workouts even on the "rainy days" or the "want to watch TV and drink beer" weekends.

To further get you going, remember that you are not only exercising to beat someone in a race. More importantly, you are doing this to battle aging, to be able to play with your kids ten years from now, to be healthy and feel good when the rest of your generation has given up fighting a yearly weight increase and their most physical activity is playing Bingo.

Whether you are 20, 40, 60 or 80 years old, don’t take your health for granted. A yearly decrease in endurance, strength, speed and flexibility will happen if you don’t fight it. Don’t grow old before you have to. Look at people like super masters Dan Karig, Bjorn Lasserud and Dick Hunt and realize that it is possible to perform at a level that is a 1000% above the average for your generation. The training for ski racing part is simply a great way of achieving these important goals.

We recently posted an article about Dick Hunt, age 66. He just sent me an e-mail apologizing for not having time to meet me in Moab for a few days of biking. His reason was a busy spring and summer schedule that looked like this:
First part of May: golf and biking in Tucson, Arizona.
May 16th depart for Nice, France. Six days of biking up through France and Italy to the Alp d’Heuz area. From there he starts a new group ride in West Italy. From there he moves back to Nice and starts a 15 day tour of Provance, France. This is followed by a little sightseeing in Venice, Italy before another 15 day tour through the beautiful Dolomites in the Cortina, Italy area. Home on July 8th. These are tours where someone transports your gear from one town to another. Everything is set up and prepared. All you need to do is bike. Your dinner is waiting for you when you are done biking at the end of the day. You can also skip days if you are tired. The hotels are good and the food is great.
On return to Oregon he further plans on doing "the Tour of Idaho" and then the Cycle Oregon tour from Idaho to the beach. And that is just 2/3 through his complete schedule! Way to go man!
His motto: Got to do what I can do while I’m able to do it.

I hope that I can do the same when I "grow up" and retire from writing for fasterskier.com

Torbjorn’s April 2002 Training Report.
I did 25 training hours which was 3 hours less than last years April. The breakdown was 12 hours of biking, 8.5 hours of weight training and 4 hours of running/walking.
Several spring snow storms made the trails really wet and reduced the running I had planned to do.
Gordon was very laid back this month and didn’t call me once to work out. He also stated that fishing is very important and was gone for that activity just about every time I called him to find a training partner. He did however show up last week for one weight room session and I was surprised that he was lifting and pulling almost the same loads as I was despite the fact that this was my 8th session this month and his first. I was starting to think that there must be some secrets to fishing that I hadn’t discovered. Standing in the middle of a river with a fly-fishing pole really makes you strong or something.

Well, when I called him three days later to check on the secret, he said that he was pretty sore the next day and could hardly move the following day. He claimed that having his kids jump on him or even touch his muscles made him yell out loud. So much for the secrets of fishing.

I only did a few hard sessions this month and even those session were not that hard.
As last year I’m geared up for biking and some of my sessions are cycling from the Park City Racquet Club (where I drop my ten year old daughter off for tennis practice) to the top of Deer Valley Ski Resort. 15 minutes in to this ride is the start of our "Deer Valley Time trial" and it’s easy to start your clock and see how it "feels today" when you get to the start point. I did this three times with the following results 20.45, 19.50 and 18.53. The first two were at a level 2-3 effort and the last one was done with Erik Stange and gave me a little drafting effect. My effort was easy intensity 3 for the first half where it was increased to an easy 4. I did not want to go any harder yet and didn’t feel for pushing hard either. It’s only April! Knowing that I could have gone about 1 minute faster was good enough on that day. My PR is 15.08 and I’m not close to that at this point, but that’s not important this early. Last season Gordon and I pushed it harder in the spring and this year I might try for the record in the fall instead. It all depends on how much biking I will be doing.

May Training Suggestions.
The goal for May is to start building a training base. This should be done mostly through short and medium and some long distance workouts. I suggest using mostly running, walking and biking for distance training this month — but rollerskiing is also fine. To avoid early season injuries I prefer short and medium running workouts and short, medium and long cycling sessions. Personally I need to wait another month before I systematically use my rollerskis. I will be on the rollerskis for a few short, 40-60 minutes workouts this month, but nothing long. There is nothing wrong by rollerskiing more, but remember that you are looking for a gradual progression throughout the summer and fall. Those of you who have little or no rollerski experience might want to get going with once per week. It takes some practice and a certain amount of balance before you start benefiting from your rollerski workouts. Those of you that are aiming for high national rankings might want to do two weekly 50 minutes to 1.5 hour rollerski sessions in May.

Remember to choose safe roads with little traffic, use a helmet and wear bright clothing. Stop poling when cars are behind you on your side of the road. Do not skate when cars are passing you. Practice in an empty parking lot or on bike path before moving on to roads with traffic if you are inexperienced using rollerskis. Practice stopping using a wide snow plow (front wheels 1.5-2.5 feet apart), turns and cornering.

Personally I’m looking to do 35-40 hours this month. The intensity in the distance workouts will be 1-2 and a little bit in zone 3.

Hard Training
I also plan on doing one weekly hard session. These sessions will not be all out from the start, but instead will be two sessions with build up intervals like 4 x 3 minutes running in a gradual uphill or rolling terrain where I run the first two intervals easy and the last two progressively harder. I will also do 1-2 easy pace/time trial efforts of about 15-25 minutes. One might be biking and one a careful running time trial. Don’t try to break any records yet.

I’m suggesting rolling terrain or gradual uphill type terrain for these workouts.
I’m not planning on any speed training but it’s a good idea to practice a little moosehufs type bounding to prepare for speed, explosiveness and bounding type intervals later this summer. I suggest 4-8 x 6-8 seconds in a gradual/steep uphill. This can be done in conjunction with a distance workout or before a weight room session.

I’m suggesting 1-2 weight room or circuit sessions per week this month. These sessions can last from 10-15 minutes to 1 hour. They can be separate sessions or added to distance or quality sessions. I prefer relatively heavy weights and 5-20 reps when using weights. Use more reps like 30-100+ when doing stomach, back and other exercises where body weight is used as resistance.

Join us for a training camp on The Olympic trails in Heber, Utah in June, September or December to learn more about what type of training that works for you and to get proper technique instruction.

The next update will be approximately June 1st.

Torbjorn

FasterSkier

Loading Facebook Comments ...

Leave a Reply