Going It Alone

Time to Race!

January 2, 2006 - By Mike Muha

I'm feeling much more positive these days! We had some of the best December snow ever in southeast Michigan. I put in fourteen days of skiing before Christmas without even trying hard, and could have put many more days in if I'd had the time.

Interval sessions went well. After November's trials and tribulations, I slowly picked up the intensity of the intervals over the first couple weeks. By mid-December, I was doing a great job maintaining my pace so that I'd end each interval in nearly the same spot.

I also made sure not to over do it when I first got on snow. I skied several easy days, making sure I did some classic and skate skiing without poles, one-legged balance drills on downhills, and some doublepoling up hills.

My favorite session was 4x5 minute intervals up one of the easy downhills slopes at Boyne Mountain. Although the cross country ski trails were in fine shape, the snow was soft and deep enough that my tiny racing baskets sank in too deep. The downhill slope was packed hard and worked better for poling.

I started at the new Alpine chairlift and climbed the far right trail, staying close to the tree line. About half way up, I crossed under the chairlift to the left to a trail that had better snow, again hugging the tree line to stay clear of snowboarders and alpiners. On a fifth and final interval, I skied all the way to the top of the mountain, an additional minute.

We simply don't have long hills like this in southeast Michigan. It was great to try different techniques (V2, V1 on each side) at different spots to see which seemed faster or more efficient. The distance and consistency of the trail allowed me to make minor changes to my technique to see what worked best.

And it was a blast going uphill faster than skiers on the chairlift!

I was going to do a second interval session at Boyne - this time on the striders instead of the skaters - but got a nasty cold that put me down hard.

I felt a bit guilty not doing much strength work or upper body interval sessions during December.

January

Race time! Hopefully we'll have enough snow for one of my favorite races, the Chestnut Valley Freestyle, followed by a hilly Boyne Highlands Classic the next day. Nick Baic has always been able to pull off Chestnut Valley in iffy conditions in the past so I have no doubt he'll be able to do it again this year.

We just lost our snow in southeast Michigan - it's raining outside right now. The near term weather forecast makes it unlikely that we'll be rollerskiing (icy conditions) or skiing (not enough snow) anytime soon. That means it running time. Fortunately, I've been running about once a week to keep my legs in running shape.

Training during racing season is tough. I'm gone on the weekends, so I need to plan time to spend with Jill during the week. That kills two or three evening during the week. Another evening is spent getting skis waxed and clothes packed for the coming weekend's races.

I'm going to try to get to the gym during lunch time to put in some training hours on days I need to be home for dinner. Not sure how much mid-week snow time I'll actually get in.

I'd like to continue focusing on interval sessions during the week - at least one and hopefully two. We'll see how tired I am from two-race weekends.