February 24, 2010

No Spring In Sight


We are still getting plenty of snow here the last week so that has meant more time on the trainer and lots of quality skiing. It's almost march and at most I am riding outside once a week on the weekend, could be a new record on trainer miles this year as I usually suffer and ride outside but with a training plan more focused on intensity and efforts it doesn't make sense to try and do those outside. When the ride is split into intervals time goes by pretty fast and if I did them outside it's too hard to control the variables and I just never feel that comfortable on my bike doing efforts when I am wearing all that clothing. So, I have been riding inside, watching the Price Is Right and also catching lots of great coverage of skiing on the Olympics. There have been some great races and it's nice that NBC is having so much live skiing on during the day and weekend.

Watching the skiing has given me some motivation too and for the first time since I started skiing about 10 years ago I have started doing intervals on skis. I never thought I wanted to get that serious on my skis and that by doing efforts it would take away the fun of skiing and turn it more into training, but so far I have been wrong now that I have started. My top speed is increasing and I am feeling a lot stronger and balanced since working on speed instead of just going out and skiing moderate pace the whole time. Like I said before, my work schedule doesn't allow me to put in 4 hour days that often but I've found while working with my coach that I can do half that time with specific power and effort zones and work that aspect instead and get about the same fitness. Realistically most of the races I do aren't over two hours anyway so other than the occasion long ride, I haven't found it that necessary to work on that.

Tested out the All Wheel Drive today too after skiing with some good figure 8s - it was a good day to have a Subaru and skis with 4" of new powder.

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