August 12th, 2008
One of my staple workouts is the six hour over distance session. After experimenting with different durations of time I have found that this is the longest workout that I benefit from. I can hold good technique and snappy movements for the entire workout and recover in about 48 hours.
Many people ask me how I can ski that long. Physically, I’m just lucky I guess. Also, my father took me on weekend warrior skis when I was growing up. We would drive one or two hours to a ski area and he would pay our trail fees. Then he saw to it that we got our money’s worth. A typical saturday ski would be a three hour session in the morning and a two hour in the afternoon. Sometimes this was repeated on Sunday. I didn’t have to ski that long, I could have sat in the lodge or in the car. This is what it meant to go skiing for me from the time I was seven until I was twelve.
Mentally I sometimes find long workouts relaxing. Most people that hear about my workouts can’t believe that I don’t die of boredom. However, I kind of like starting out on an OD knowing that all I have to do for the next six hours is ski. I get into a rhythm and a half conscious state where I am always focused on technique but allow fantasies of race victories, past racing failures, and my girlfriend to flow in and out of my mind. I tend to ski fastest when thinking about bothched race efforts. I still get pissed off at myself for finishing second at the state xc running meet my senior year of highschool. Thinking about that race is always good for a ten heart beat increase in intensity.
I classic skied six hours on August 10th and never bonked which is unusual for me. I am crediting that to the few days I had to take off for a recent sponsor trip. The rest must have allowed me to top off my glycogen stores. I was enjoying myself on the ski until about the four hour mark when a hail storm came out of nowhere that dumped nickel sized chunks of ice on me for ten minutes. Then the hail changed to pouring rain like I have never seen in New Hampshire. It was so nastly out that I got several offers from passing motorists to give me a lift home. If they had offered during the hail storm I might have taken them up on the offer but I can deal with rain.
