Getting Serious
Friday, December 2, 2011 at 12:51AM 
It's been a productive but not too structured fall. I was roller skiing and running regularly with an eye towards the Ski Mountaineering National Championships here in Jackson in early January. That races shows up early on the calender and it's hard to feel completely ready for it.
But it was the prospect of a new job threatening to derail my whole preparation that kept me distracted. However, a little over a week ago I found out that I did NOT get the job so I decided to refocus on the upcoming events and get back to training.
Nationals are a mere 5 weeks away. Enough time to build on a deep base from this summer and fall. The roller skiing developed enough sport specific fitness that I felt I could jump right in to structured skimo training. With the early season snow, I was able to get a few long tours in before putting on the heart rate monitor and really paying attention. This post documents my first real week of structured training.
It's nice to have a holiday this past week to allow more time for training. I was shooting for around 15 hours. I could have been closer to 20 if I wanted but opted for restraint and a little more intensity than just pure volume. Skiing was good with some fresh snow making long tours painless to get. As you can see, over 85% of the time was spent in zones 1 and 2. I stayed out of the "junk zone", zone 3, with only 8% of the time represented there. I did what I felt was just enough intensity, longer threshold intervals, in this case, which accounted for 6% of training time.
The most interesting and exciting difference that was apparent as I started logging skiing miles was my speed in Z2. As you all will recall, I finally got a heart rate monitor last year and started paying attention. My biggest struggle was staying in Z2 while touring. I felt that I had to slow to a crawl to keep my HR down low enough. This year, I can tick right along, not really bored at all and stay easily within my target Z2.
Matthew Weatherly-White from Restwise thinks this is due to a greater economy of movement likely driven by all the running I did this summer. I firmly believe that running is better preparation for skimo racing. The motor patterns are much more similar than cycling or anything else. The other related factor is an improvement in sub-threshold fitness. Most of my running was done in the hills and I spent a lot of time at elevated heart rates. Contrast this to road cycling where the intensity tends to be much easier for long periods of time.
The nice thing about this is that if I'm following a skin track I can clip along without getting into zone 3 unless I want to be there. Breaking trail, of course, is spent almost entirely in Z3 and simply cannot be avoided.
Summary
The week was made up of a combination of structured interval training on Snow King and long days in the mountains powder skiing. Intervals were done on race gear and the tours were done on Dynafit Broad Peaks (74 mm underfoot), a light but sturdy set-up that can handle anything. Both set-ups are mounted with Plum Race 145 bindings and I ski the Dynafit TLT 5 Performance boots with both.
Total time training was just under 17 hours, not including a gym session. I did a few running sprints in a dry tunnel, about 7 x 40 seconds, just because I wanted to run. Not sure if they help anything specific to skimo but it was fun going that hard. Total vertical was 23,166 feet.
The Movescount graft below shows the breakdown.
Reader Comments (3)
Hi Brian, great site, I have a question about your equipment, kind of off subject. I notice you're skiing the Dynafit Broad Peaks, what size are you running and how do you like them? I was thinking of getting a pair for bigger days when I don't want to be on ski trabs. Thanks.
You're getting serious? Does this mean that your usual 'comic relief' angle will disappear? Don't lose the smiles in the onslaught of heartbeats...
Hey Brian,
Thanks for all the great posts! I am curious, what length Broad Peak do you ski? What is your height, weight.
I have a pair of atomic mx 20 race skis with sportiva bindings for skimo races this year and I picked up a pair of BD Stigmas in 160 super cheap...wondering if you would sell the stigma and get a longer ski for your super light touring board? This is not my powder setup but hoping it could be a nice all day touring machine.
Thanks.
Tyler