But I am Les Tired!

Today has been a hard day. We had a rollerskiing sprint workout this morning and then a short bike ride with agility and core this afternoon. I feel pretty rundown and overall pooped. I feel even more tired than the day that I biked halfway up to the nordic centre and then realized that I was wearing my PJs underneath my warm-ups, not my clothes for the weight workout!

So I am going to take’er easy tomorrow. I was supposed to do a three hour road bike, but I think I will cut than down—by a lot. Depending on how I feel in the next 12 hours I will probably do about an hour tomorrow really easy then spend the rest of the day pounding the food, water, and vitamins along with some solid stretching and other recovery techniques to help my body through this little rough patch. I just feel incredibly rundown from all the training, but I am lucky that I caught it before I got sick (knock on wood).

Here are the signs that start to show up when I get really tired and rundown and make me realize that I shouldn’t just try to push through it:

1. I stop communicating—with my coach, with everyone around me, and with myself. (I just looked at my ilog today and I haven’t filled it out for almost 5 days.)
2. I get really cranky at workouts, and then all of a sudden I get really quiet because it takes too much energy to even complain. (Let’s just say that today’s afternoon workout was not my finest hour. Sorry team mates!)
3. I am not hungry. No matter how much training I am doing I just don’t seem that interested in food, but as soon as I start eating my meal I realize that I am famished. (Supper tonight was a gorge fest.)
4. Normal, everyday activities like brushing my teeth or taking a shower seem to take me twice the amount of time. (It took me 30min to make a simple salad tonight!)
5. I don’t really feel like doing anything. (Right about now, I would rather sit down on my bed and stare at the wall than even watch TV.)
6. My resting HR gets really low, but my ruskos become really sporadic.
7. I start to forget little things (like what I was doing) and find it really frusterating. 8. Life seems a little less fun than usual.

Now, this list may seem depressing, but I know that with a solid few days of rest, or however long it takes to recover, I will be up and at it in no time. I am not worried, just tired. Hey, it happens. I am an athlete.

So, to all my fellow skiers, I encourage you to make a list like mine so that you know when to take a step back and listen to what your body is telling you. Don’t ever let it get too far because skiing is supposed to be fun. Don’t change that!

Do You Feel Fit?

This was the question posed to me as I crested the top of a hill at the nordic centre yesterday by my coach, Mike Cavaliere. I thought about my answer as Mike pricked my finger for a blood lactate test.

Do I feel fit? I am in good shape. I’m healthy. I have been doing a ton of training. But do I feel fit? My answer was: “I wouldn’t say that I am ready to hop right back into racing, but I do feel pretty good.”

I have been doing a lot of long biking workouts and double polling to try and make my heart stronger and have been working out at the gym a couple times a week with a pretty intense weight schedule. Those two things have been pushing my body right to its limits which is pretty cool. I’ve been cramming in the sleep, naps and stretching to try and recover in time for the next workout.

Then just yesterday, I had an interval workout and I felt great! I felt like I could have gone forever and even asked Mike if I could do another interval (the answer was no haha). It’s pretty cool that this new training program that I am on can work me so hard, but leave me feeling great at the end of these big weeks.

I am excited for what this means for the racing season!

Testing Week! AHHHH!!!!

This week is the AWCA testing week. So far I have endured a VO2 Max test, the uphill double poll test, a physio assessment, and I still have one more time trial tomorrow—the skate uphill test.

The VO2 max test was quite the experience. VO2 max is the maximum capacity of an individual's body to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise, which reflects the physical fitness of the individual (Wikipedia). This was my first time doing this test, and because of my continued hip problems, I, unlike all my team mates, had to do it on a bike.

Before the test, the staff at TCR Sport Lab took our body fat readings, weight, height, blood pressure and a few other readings. Then I hopped onto the stationary bike that was hooked up to a computer and got to do a virtual ride through some random desert. It was pretty cool. The giant computer screen in front of me showed me riding uphills and down. When I would go uphill it would get harder to pedal and when I rode down it would get easier.

Then for the actual test, they strapped on the breathing tube apparatus and plugged my nose. The tube runs through a computer which measures ventilation, oxygen, and carbon dioxide concentrations in both the inhaled and exhaled air.

They started me off very easily and increased my workload by 20 watts every 3min, telling me to keep my RPMs at 85-90 or they would stop my test. Once I hit a certain point, the watts were increased by 20 every minute until I could not keep my RPMs in the appropriate range. At first the breathing tube didn’t bother me at all and I barely noticed the change in wattage every 3 minutes, but then I basically hit the wall and suffered through the last few minutes of my test.

As for my results, let’s just say that I won’t be chasing down Lance Armstrong anytime soon. My heart rate hit 207 which surprised the lab pros and my VO2 was on the low side for an athlete which isn’t great, but what it really means is that I am not in good biking shape. Duh, I already know that. Throw me on roller skis and let me try that again! But it did help to clarify my training zones and it also found that my body is basically only burning carbohydrates when I train or race. This means that I cannot go for very long without eating because my body just completely runs out of energy. This also means that I probably don’t do very well at distance events. True. To fix this problem, and the problem of my high heart rate, I have been instructed to do lots of long, slow, zone 1 (aerobic) training. This will strengthen my heart and let it beat slower, more powerful, beats and give my body time to dip into fat reserves and learn how to burn that kind of energy as well.

So all in all it was a great training tool and a neat experience. I look forward to doing it again because now I know what it is all about. I hope that next time I can do it running or roller skiing to get an accurate result, but for now I will be out there pounding out the hours to try and teach my body what it is supposed to do!

Bye for now!