Archive | Masters Blog

August rolls on by! We have been putting a lot of emphasis on “tracking” and “sharing” our workouts this summer…this has sort of been the natural progression in an era combining COVID-19 and Strava…

Heck, I even made a reference in the Junior Blog to our emphasis on using GPS watches and mile pace to better progress our training and measure improvement as we worked on running goals…

But even still, we can all benefit from stepping away now and then and just enjoying the workout. Hence the Masters Workout of the Week is NOT one that will appear on fitness tracking dashboard! The challenge this week is to train solo for a session, with no tracking. Maybe you keep your watch on you to remember what time it is, and when you start/end the session (especially if you have a meeting or deadline to be at post-workout) but keep the stopwatch and GPS off.

Focus on the trail ahead, the curve of the road, or the summit of the mountain. Find a great headspace and just go for it.

Here’s a short little article from Running Magazine discussing a bit about how it can be good to disconnect a bit!

You don’t need to share your workout because, well, hopefully nobody (including you) will even know too much about the numbers-based details!

When all you need to focus on is the road ahead!

August is now here, and we’ve had relatively dry weather for quite some time now (the incoming tropical storm remnants notwithstanding). Earlier this spring, COVID-19 and wet spring weather forced the closure of the Long Trail as well as many popular hiking destinations. Thankfully, we are all able to enjoy the outdoors a little more now if we are responsible.

While some teams have taken trips recently to the Presidential Range in NH, the suggestion this week is to keep it within our state, supporting the local economy while also checking out some great trails in the area. The Masters workout this week is to get in a traditional hike, or even a trail run, on a big mountain!

Big can be defined many ways, from Mount Philo to Mount Mansfield. But there’s plenty to choose from. Here are a few helpful hiking resources:

Green Mountain Club

AllTrails

Trail Run Project

Bring poles to make your workout a bit more ski-specific, bring some food and water for a long workout, and get in some time away from busy roads, neighborhoods, and parking lots!

Always searching for a bigger climb! (June 2019)

Masters, your workout of the week this time is actually a race! We’re entering the “Virtual Racing World of 2020/2021” and what better way to be prepared than to test out a few options for your own competition. No Strava or smart watch required…but it can make things more fun! For this workout, all you’ll need is a stopwatch and a set course that you know won’t change too much (for example, if on a bike try not to pick a dirt road that’s slated to be paved!).

This can be done in any mode…run, bike, ski, hike, swim…the goal is to either:

-Establish your own “race course”

-Compete on an existing “virtual course” or “segment”

Some of our Masters are already familiar with chasing segments, and can tell you just where their favorite timetrial and competitive locations are. Will anyone unseat Steve Crafts as the legend of “Hobo Hill” on the 127 bikepath? Can anyone top the 2015 time set by Torin LaLiberte on a pair of speedy rollerskis up the Bolton access road? Maybe you watched the Harmeyer  brothers in their epic quest to claim the biking segment on Burlington’s Depot Street:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W9MQyqNz2c

With an uncertain season ahead, virtual racing is one way to compete without the constraints of a typical racing scene (crowds, confined spaces, personal contact, etc). But you don’t even need an account on Garmin or Strava to make it happen. The first virtual races happened well before technology even made that term a concept…clipboards and pencils stashed away in basements and desk drawers held record times of local hills and loops. Skiing and running teams that don’t even exist anymore kept track of tons of routes and rankings. And you too can create your own race if you don’t want to tackle the online pages of Strava.

Your challenge this week is to give it your all in one “race” effort. Maybe it’s a minute long, or maybe it’s a big climb of a few miles. But either way, you’ll have to dig deep and find the motivation to push it just like a regular race, which is something we just might all see a bit more of this year.

Without progression, we will never improve! Continuing to challenge our best is what leads to gains and growth (at ANY age) and that’s why we are revisiting the 30/30 workout from earlier this summer. You can find that initial posting right here:

Masters Workout of the Week: 30/30s

It has been 5 weeks since that challenge, a perfect window of adaptation for our bodies to have gotten used to a new level of training. The mission this week is to step it up by increasing the number of 30-second bursts in each set. Last time was 2×6 minutes, and this time we will shoot for 2×8 minutes. That’s only an extra minute per set, or 2 minutes total…but the goal is to keep increasing…think about it!

In August that means 2×10 minutes

In September we jump to 2×12 minutes

October brings a longer standard set: 1×20 minutes

November means 1×25 minutes

December shortens the intervals to 20 seconds on/40 seconds of but in a 2×15 minute segment…facilitating recovery and speed-of-movement as we sharpen for race season…and then, from January onward these types of speeds are incorporated into all sorts of warmups, distance skis, and race-prep.

It’s time to increase the intervals and increase the power!

Another week is upon us, and the training must go on! This Masters Workout of the Week is a focus on specific strength.

What is “specific strength” and why do we do it? Getting stronger in general will help our skiing; not just to be more powerful on climbs or more stable on descents, but also to help us execute the technique that we want to ski with. So many of us look to video clips and drills to improve our technique…both of these are super critical to improvement, but without enough strength to execute and maintain this technique we might only be able to ski the way we want for a couple kilometers before the correct body position and movements begin to suffer.

Specific strength is a way to isolate a muscle group in a ski-specific setting so that we can improve its capabilities. With specific strength work, you can also get a feel (literally) for the bigger picture of ski technique, and how different muscle groups play a role in contributing to powerful motions. Double poling for a long period of time will really make you appreciate how handy your legs can be in a hilly classic race. Likewise, doing a lot of skating without poles might make you realize how much you can rely on your arms and poles for balance rather than power and propulsion.

And those last two sentences give away a bit about the two most basic types of specific strength…double pole work and no-pole skate work. Both involve the core, and one really targets the upper body while the other engages the lower.

Some athletes like to combine workouts and do a ski with a set amount of no-pole skating and a set amount of double poling (usually with skate poles, as you are on skate skis). However, I prefer for a workout to have one focus and technique at a time unless it is a combination workout aiming for a long distance. With one technique at a time, you can get that better overall picture of how components compliment one another.

For example, you can incorporate a chunk of double poling into the middle of a classic rollerski, but it’s likely that the beginning and ending parts of that classic ski will also involve some double poling…you can therefore have a better feel of when/where it makes most sense to double pole during OTHER parts of your ski, having double poled on all sorts of terrain during a specific strength “set”. The same goes for skating, but more-so with tempo and body position…without poles you can’t quite rely on raw upper body power to compensate for good body position, driving knees, and engaged hips.

The Workout:

1 hour classic ski or skate ski

[IF CLASSIC] incorporate 20 minutes of double poling only during the middle third of the ski

[IF SKATE] incorporate 20 minutes of no-pole skating during the middle third of the ski

Try to notice your complete technique during the first and third components of the ski!