After a great break from hard training and ski racing in the month of April, I was already looking forward to the up and coming racing season. When I finished my last exam in the end of April, and had completed my first year of University, I was pretty pumped to get back to some structured training again.
When leaving Ottawa to go back to Labrador City for the summer, I came back to a land of snow and beautiful spring skiing weather. I thought there was no better way to kick off my summer training, than spending two solid weeks on snow. I had some great long skis in perfect conditions. I also took some great advice and decided to ease in to running this summer. During these weeks, if I wasn't skiing for training, I did some short easy running workouts with increasing the amount of time each run. This really made a difference a few weeks later and kept me injury free when starting dryland training.
A small preview of spring skiing in Labrador. Nothing like laying down fresh tracks on May 4th.
May 12th was my last ski, and then it was on to dryland training. I started out my training with general non ski specific activities such as Mountain biking, running, and weight and core strength in the gym. This was a great change of pace, I was feeling strong in the gym and running was becoming more enjoyable every day. I'm not a born runner, so every summer I try to improve my running fitness as much as possible. As the weeks flew by in May, I felt like I was starting to build up a good base of fitness. Towards the end of the month, I started doing some zone3 intensity intervals to build up my aerobic endurance level. I did these workouts with ski poles, on rolling terrain trails. At this time, I also slowly started doing more ski specific workouts such as some rollerskiing and long distance ski walking.
Training was going great but the weather had become less than satisfactory and the seasons seem to switch from Spring to Fall with cool temps and traces of snow day after day. I found my self-wearing a good portion of my ski clothes while training from late May until early June. Overall, I don't think the weather affected my motivation to train hard and it looks like Summer is going to show up right on time this year. I'm glad to say I did my first shorts and t-shirt run this week since I returned home.
So now it is mid June and I'm really starting to ramp up the training volume. Last week was my biggest week yet with about 15hrs of training. I also started a summer job this month, this makes managing/planning my training a little more difficult than before but I found out a few little tricks along the way to make it happen. One of these tricks I thought work well was if you are going to get out training in the morning before work, you have to make sure you get up extra early just so your body gets that shock of being awake so early and you pop out of bed. Otherwise I tend to fall back to sleep uncontrollably.
That pretty much wraps up my spring training events, I can only hope that the rest of my summer training goes well too.
This is the hill where I do some of my hardest workouts. I did my first tire pulling workout here last week. One of my favorite workouts to do later in the summer is; 5x5min uphill ski striding repeats. Perfect puke session!
When leaving Ottawa to go back to Labrador City for the summer, I came back to a land of snow and beautiful spring skiing weather. I thought there was no better way to kick off my summer training, than spending two solid weeks on snow. I had some great long skis in perfect conditions. I also took some great advice and decided to ease in to running this summer. During these weeks, if I wasn't skiing for training, I did some short easy running workouts with increasing the amount of time each run. This really made a difference a few weeks later and kept me injury free when starting dryland training.
A small preview of spring skiing in Labrador. Nothing like laying down fresh tracks on May 4th.
May 12th was my last ski, and then it was on to dryland training. I started out my training with general non ski specific activities such as Mountain biking, running, and weight and core strength in the gym. This was a great change of pace, I was feeling strong in the gym and running was becoming more enjoyable every day. I'm not a born runner, so every summer I try to improve my running fitness as much as possible. As the weeks flew by in May, I felt like I was starting to build up a good base of fitness. Towards the end of the month, I started doing some zone3 intensity intervals to build up my aerobic endurance level. I did these workouts with ski poles, on rolling terrain trails. At this time, I also slowly started doing more ski specific workouts such as some rollerskiing and long distance ski walking.
Training was going great but the weather had become less than satisfactory and the seasons seem to switch from Spring to Fall with cool temps and traces of snow day after day. I found my self-wearing a good portion of my ski clothes while training from late May until early June. Overall, I don't think the weather affected my motivation to train hard and it looks like Summer is going to show up right on time this year. I'm glad to say I did my first shorts and t-shirt run this week since I returned home.
So now it is mid June and I'm really starting to ramp up the training volume. Last week was my biggest week yet with about 15hrs of training. I also started a summer job this month, this makes managing/planning my training a little more difficult than before but I found out a few little tricks along the way to make it happen. One of these tricks I thought work well was if you are going to get out training in the morning before work, you have to make sure you get up extra early just so your body gets that shock of being awake so early and you pop out of bed. Otherwise I tend to fall back to sleep uncontrollably.
That pretty much wraps up my spring training events, I can only hope that the rest of my summer training goes well too.
This is the hill where I do some of my hardest workouts. I did my first tire pulling workout here last week. One of my favorite workouts to do later in the summer is; 5x5min uphill ski striding repeats. Perfect puke session!
Interesting Reading. . .
"OWL Rafting - The Mighty Ottawa River"