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MID-SEASON
JUSTIN FREEMAN
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR FOR THE MASTER SKIER
Justin Freeman grew up skiing in New Hampshire, but he began racing cross-country fulltime after completing his master’s degree in physics in 2000. He made the U.S. Team in 2003 and won two NorAm races his first season along with competing in his first World Championships. He was a member of the 2006 Olympic Team.
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Training is always about balance. To get better, you have to first train hard and then recover. Skip the recovery, and you are just making yourself tired.
Even those of us who train full time have to be well aware of this. We have to balance the number of hours we train against intensity of our training. There is benefit to core strength, arm strength, and leg strength, but it is not feasible to work hard on all three areas every time we train.
Some intervals are good for VO2 max, others for lactate threshold-working to improve one of these markers often means neglecting the other.
Long overdistance workouts are important for improving efficiency, but these workouts have to compete with strength and interval sessions. And all of these workouts may be interrupted or modified in order to add an emphasis on technique.
Add in a lot of travel and occasional testing to assess how our training is working, and we end up spending a lot of time thinking about how to balance different kinds of training against the need to recover.
It has taken me a long time to learn the value of balance. For years, my goal was to accumulate hours in my training log. This was true even when I was a graduate student, spending most of the day in a lab doing physics and then going home to do homework. Today, when I could easily put twenty five hours a week into my training log, I never do. Instead, I figure out what training (and recovery) I need and do my best to complete it, and let hours come out as they will. The difference is fairly clearly illustrated in the following two weeks of training. The first is July 5-11, 1999. The second is July 5-11, 2004.
Monday (7/5/99) AM travel PM 1:45 roller ski classic (slow,weak)
Tuesday AM 1:00 run PM 2:00 bike
Wednesday AM 1:30 roller ski skate PM 1:35 run
Thursday AM 1:15 roller ski classic PM 0:45 weights PM 1:15 run (slow)
Friday AM 1:05 run (slow) PM 0:30 swim (pathetic, slow) PM 0:53 run
Saturday AM 2:50 run PM 0:35 weights
Sunday 3:10 rollerski classic
The total for the week is twenty hours. If hours are our only measure, this is good. But if we look at speed, intervals, or spenst, we find nothing.
There are only two short strength sessions. And despite commenting four times that I was slow (or even pathetic), my log will not show a day off for another 23 weeks.
Monday (7/5/04) AM no training-long hike with Heidi
Tuesday AM easy hike PM 2:10 roller ski skate
Wednesday AM 1:55 run with spenst PM 1:30 strength
Thursday AM 2:10 roller ski classic with 3x10 min level 3 and 3x1 min level 4+ (hard, felt solid) PM 1:06 run (fast)
Friday AM 0:40 roller ski classic, broke pole strap so finished workout with AM 1:30 run
Saturday AM off, need rest
Sunday AM 1:45 roller ski skate with 5x5 min level 4 PM 1:05 run easy
This week has 13:45 in total training time. But this is done in barely half the training sessions of the week from five years ago.
And in this week I have two intervals sessions, a spenst workout, and a solid strength workout. There are also two days with no training hours; one is a hike that while providing no training value still made me tired and the other is a true rest day.
The two comments I wrote on my training are both positive.
The second week could have been better. This is part of an almost three week stretch without an overdistance workout.
While the one strength workout is more than the two 1999 workouts put together, another would have been good. And the easy skis could have included some short speeds or pickups.
Compared to five years ago though, this week of training is exemplary.
Distance, intervals, strength, spenst, and rest are all represented. Unlike 1999, there are no triple workout days, where extra hours or minutes are squeezed in simply to add time to the total.
And finally, every workout has a purpose, not counting workouts after intervals (useful for flushing lactate from the body) there are only two easy distance workouts, compared to ten in 1999.
Hopefully your training log already has more in common with my second week than with thefirst. But if that week from July 1999 looks familiar, you will benefit from some changes: Train fewer times, maybe for a bit longer each session. Take more days off. And know the purpose of each and every session you do.
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