Hi Everyone,
So far I have been training for about 5 weeks now. It has only been a short period of time, and yet everything seems to have gotten off the ground quite quickly. We have been pumping iron in the gym with our new strength coach Rob Soffer, and have been assessed by our team doctor and physiotherapist. I have settled into my new house in Canmore, and am loving it! I am surrounded by a gigantic playground, where I can step out my front door and go for a run, bike, roller ski, you name it; all surrounded by a beautiful backdrop of the Canadian Rockies.
This past week we completed what we call “testing”. Testing is done every year in the spring to establish where you are physically and what sort of things your need to work on throughout the summer. The idea is to see an improvement when we test again in the late fall. And hopefully by the time race season rolls around we will start to see improvements on the results board as well.
First of all we headed to the TCR Sport Lab in Calgary, where we acted as guinea pigs by running on treadmills with tubes attached to our face. This gave us information such as our VO2 max; aerobic/anaerobic thresholds; and training zones. (FYI, VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen in millilitres, one can use in one minute per kilogram of body weight). Basically the goal is to gradually increase this number throughout our ski career. With all the training and racing we do, our heart slowly starts to grow larger and stronger, enabling us to pump more oxygen to our muscles faster.
Next, we strapped on our roller skis and hammered up a 3km hill as fast as we could. This provided us with a base for how fast we are now, in order to set a goal for how fast we want to be by the end of the fall. We also did a similar test, only we used our arms to double pole as fast as we could up a hill that was about 800m long.
Like always, there is a lot to work on. I have discovered my weaknesses and set my goals. Now I am keen and ready to do whatever it takes in order make me a faster skier when it comes time to hit the race trails in the winter.
Until next time!
AWCA Team
Road to the Nordic Centre
doing some skate roller skiing
