I have been rotating between working out in the basement during the week and skating on the weekends, when the weather permits. It has been a wet and windy spring here once the cold finally broke. I have been able to skate at least once, sometimes twice, every weekend since mid to late April. After my VO2 Max test in April, I did a lot of research about cardiovascular capacity, particularly material written by Joe Friel, and decided to significantly change my early season base training. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to spend a lot more time working on base cardiovascular fitness, and, as a result, many of my recent training sessions that are not focused on weight lifting or skating have been extended duration cycling sessions with my bike in the trainer. In addition to being a great way to build base cardiovascular fitness, it also helps me get caught up on television I don’t otherwise have time to watch. I am averaging 2 of these sessions per week. My weight lifting program has changed, also. Like last year, heading in to race preparation phases, I tend to focus a lot on cardiovascular training. When I made the transition last year, I took some of the weight lifting program into a joint plyometric program where I would do a super set of lifts followed by a super set of plyos. I am doing some thing similar this year, but with a different target for my lifts. Rather that focusing on split squats or Poliquin squats, I am hoping to build power by mixing power cleans, rear squats, dead lifts, and Romanian dead lifts with tuck jumps, split jumps, single leg jumps, super skaters, and box jumps. I do this work out one day per week, and spend the rest of my training time on the bike or on skates.
Skating seems like it is going well. The weekends have worked out so that the weather is manageable, though we have had some very windy days. Slow skating is good experience, and it builds strength. I am noticing deficiencies in my technique, and I am climbing a lot of hills. I hope this will yield good results as I move into a training phase with a lot more skating. So far, my average speeds have increased over last year, some of them by more than 1 mile per hour, which is a considerable jump from the end of one race season to the start of another. I think weight lifting has helped considerably in this regard.
Starting this weekend, training changes again. I am going to continue lifting weights, but I am planning on deloading, basically making my weight lifting maintenance work outs meant to insure that I am not losing anything. I may slowly creep the weight back up, but I find that the delayed onset muscle soreness after really heavy lift days results in restricted training on skating days. Skating volume is going to seriously increase. This year, I am focusing on technique and trying to get every bit of power from my legs to the ground. The hope is that this increase in efficiency will result in faster marathon times. I am hoping to skate at least 4 times per week, with one day being a technique focus, one day an interval focus, and the other two longer skates that mix aerobic HR zone training and longer distance tempo skating. I need to climb a lot of hills, also. I plan on reviewing the data from the last Chicagoland Inline Marathon race to see where I struggled with the hills and see if I can keep up with the main pack this year. All I want to do is keep up with the main pack and not get dropped. If I can stay in the pack and avoid pulling, I should be able to keep pace for the entire race, or, at least, I hope to. The key to this course, though, are the hills, and making sure you can climb hill after hill without losing the rest of the group. I see a lot of time climbing the mountain-esque hills on Country Club Road in my future.
With all of this training going on, I am hoping to post more videos than I have been lately. Also, I am going to have some posts that combine a lot of the research I have been doing on cardiovascular capacity detailing how inline speed skaters can learn from other endurance athletes and how these training theories can be applied to inline skating. I hope it will make for some interesting reading. This weekend, I am skating with Team Rainbo, and will shoot video of the Saturday practice to post next week. For anyone who isn’t yet, Spring has sprung, get out and skate!