Training With Torbjorn And Gordon: Our First Long Bike Ride Of The Season

Fasterskier.com has posted several articles this spring talking about how the training season official started May 1, (give or take a little) for elite level skiers. In case you didn’t get the point, this was meant to get everyone else like masters and juniors going as well. Gordon Lange and I didn’t stop training this spring either. For information on the training with Torbjorn and Gorden column go to: www.fasterskier.com/feature.php?series_id=2

Personally I used April to test out a large number of interval sessions that we are planning on using in our personal coaching service later this summer and fall: (See www.torbjornsport.com/tbksports/030707coaching.html)

Gordon got a kick out of this and enjoyed asking me (daily) two, three times per day, if I wasn’t going to leave and do my intervals soon. In May I backed-off while Gordon got going again, after a (for him) very casual April.

We hardly trained together in May, but both of us did mostly shorter distance sessions and some interval training. I did more weight room training and intervals than Gordon, while he got in some medium long (1.5-2 hours) mountain bike rides in Moab and road bike rides in the Park City area with the Nordic combined team skiers he is coaching. He was now also bragging about how fast he was riding (without even trying) up our old time-trial stretch from Park City to the top of Deer Valley. At the end of May we both felt it was time to start getting in some longer distance sessions as well, and decided on doing a long road bike ride that “we could feel” afterwards on Thursday June 3.

Note that we consider long workouts something that lasts longer than two hours. We view workouts lasting longer than 4 hours as a type of distance as well but we only occasionally go that long (4+ hours)
Our choice for our first 3+ hour session was from Kamas to the top of Mirror Lake Highway/Bald Mountain and Back. This ride is on great pavement and takes you from roughly 5000 feet elevation up to 10000 feet in about two hours of rolling, then gradual up and finally steep uphill.