Disclaimer: I started this post on August 6th I think, and I tried to find time to finish but it didn’t happen. It was supposed to be posted 8/7, but was actually posted today, 8/16. Read it like it was 8/7!!
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I misspoke in an earlier post…the week ending 8/7 was actually my week of training the most hours.

Last week (ending 8/7/09) was an absolutely balls-out training week. It was the big volume push of the summer. Not too difficult, just more hours training than I’m used to doing. And so I’ve noticed that with more volume training at once comes more learning about my own body and limits.

Here’s the rundown from the last 7 days.
Thursday: level 3 skate rollerski intervals up the North Adams side of Mt. Greylock. (1 hour 20 minutes)
Friday: hour recovery run. (1 hour 5 minutes)
Saturday: level 4 classic rollerski intervals up the Lanesboro side of Greylock. (1 hour 45 minutes)
Sunday: off.
Monday: level 3 bounding intervals up the Hopper trail to the top of Greylock, then back down. (2 hours 37 minutes)
Tuesday: 3 hour distance run on the Taconic Crest Trail into 3 states, skiwalking the steep grades, to find the VT/NY state corner marker, the Snow Hole, and the VT/MA/NY tri-state marker. (3 hours 7 minutes)
Wednesday: hour warmup run and then Hilary’s Decathlon Circuit, explained below. (2 hours 32 minutes)
Thursday: distance skate rollerski from 5 corners in S. Williamstown to the Mt. Greylock summit (2 hours 57 minutes)

That means in a rolling 7-day period ending yesterday, I did about 15 hours of training, give or take. I’ve logged 12 hours so far for this calendar week.

Here is Hilary’s Decathlon Circuit. It actually contains 11 exercises, done in any amount of reps at a time, in any order adding up to one of the three amounts specified. If that doesn’t make sense, think of it as a workout where you must do 160 pushups, 45 pull ups, and all the other exercises any way you can to complete the workout.

Here are some photos that I’ve neglected to post since last time.

An overcast day in Lanesboro turned into a foggy, rainy assault on Mt. Greylock today. The 3 10:00 minute level 3 intervals we planned were made pretty intense by the rain. Topher, Pat, my brother and I along with some others toughed out the epic conditions and summitted in well under an hour and a half. The intervals felt really good even though Topher pulled away in the last few meters of the last interval. Intervals like that that are with people always give me the hunger to race and remind me why Im in this sport. Pictures of the summit will be online tomorrow.

-Ian from WordPress for iPod

Yesterday after the storm I had a sweet ski at Prospect Mountain. I think they got a solid 6″ of fresh powder, which they rolled and groomed. Unfortunately I skied about an hour earlier than the tracks were set, so I had to do my classic 4×4 intervals without a real track. The classic skiing was fairly nice though; I put on some Swix green and was set to go for most of the day. The only problem was when it started to get colder (9º F) towards the end of the workout, the green started to get slower.

Today I skied with the Mounties at the high school and did a workout with them. Basically it was an hour and a half ski with the business end of the workout being 100m head-to-head sprints on the track. I got beaten by the two top Greylock skiers, Dylan and Patrick, and tied my brother. Those guys do sprints a lot at the end of their workouts, which is something I’d like to do more of, but don’t always have the time at school. At the end some Greylock Alumni showed up and sprinted as well. Overall, a good two days.

Happy New Year!
Ian

Somehow the Holderness Nordic Ski Team has completely foregone intervals in the month we’ve been training. We have been doing completely distance training on what snow we’ve had at school and at Waterville. After the races last weekend I decided that it was time to get into some intensity training again.

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