It was nice to take a break from structured team training in April, but it feels even better to be back and undertaking a new season! The rain this week didn’t make the great photos, and we kept things local without many crazy adventures so as to ease-into the big goals we all have for ’25/’26.
With rainy and gloomy weather, it has for sure been amazing to start right off with access to the MNCC and an indoor facility. We’ve continued to add little things here-and-there, with even more pieces of equipment on the way. We’ve got a second SkiErg now mounted on the wall, with more to go up when their replacement cords arrive. More banners now adorn the walls, and additional bars and weights will enable more athletes to train simultaneously.
The first “hard” effort of the year was a 500m SkiErg test. This is a simple, short test that is easy to repeat and doesn’t knock you out so much as to ruin the ability to still do a strength session or distance workout before or after…we hope to keep it in our back pocket for a few tries this season to see how we’re improving on our double poling power and, yes, pacing (which is still important even on this test!).
We’ve also started to try incorporating a new warmup for the gym and some running sessions that is really focused on multiple aspects of lower body activation and running injury prevention. We go through this set below twice: once you’re familiar with the exercises, the whole thing can take under 10 minutes. Between this and our usual band activation warmup, we’re doing our best to keep our bodies in good form.
On Saturday we put that early running training to work accomplished a pretty involved interval session: a loop run in the rain with miles 2, 4, and 6 (if you were a U18) at L3 pace. This was a great ‘capacity building’ workout as it mixed both distance and intensity in a smooth way. It can be hard to do this on rollerskis, and not something to undertake every single week no matter the format…but when running, the muscular demands are more limited so it does make this overall load manageable despite some obvious soreness from early-season running.
It’s a great way to build running mileage and efficiency, and we ended up with 9 miles total on a route that took us from the green in Jericho Center, down Schillhammer Rd, down Barber Farm to Tarbox, up to Fitzsimmonds and then back to the center (if you know the area). It was about 70% dirt which was also key, since I don’t know if any skier prefers pavement when they are running.
The week ended on Sunday with the actual SUN for the first time in a while! Was it the best day of the year thus far, weatherwise?
We celebrated with a 10 mile adventure right from the MNCC in Jonesville. You can pick up an old section of the Long Trail half a mile from our home base, and follow it up through some beautiful stretches of forest between Stage and Notch Roads…you can even find some cool vistas and streams when you don’t follow the trail (whether or not that is intentional). We followed the trail up to the Preston Pond area, where we then took a left and popped out on Stage Road for a few downhill miles back home.
There’s already ideas in the works for more great long running/trail loops that we can accomplish right from the MNCC. Richmond is truly a one-stop resource for hiking, running, biking, rollerskiing, and more!
