State of the Season
Now three and a half weeks into I what think has been the longest cold snap since we've been here, this ski season is shaping up to be a wash. Hopefully February and March will be decent. The good news is that it was too cold to have the 10K freestyle race this weekend at Birch Hill. I was afraid it was going to creep up to about -20.5 and someone would then blow on the thermometer to make it -20.1 and they'd say, okay the race is on!
I've skied five times in two weeks now, kind of like the old days in Colorado when we usually had to drive 1.5 to 2 hr to get to some trails.
Still beats New England and much of the rest of the Lower 48 (Colorado included) this year because we know that this will pass and should have another two or three months of season left. By April that's kind of a mixed blessing.
So last week I did the best I could (two good workouts on the snow) and actually did a lot of running. 32 miles, plus a 1 hr snowshoe run (6 miles) on Sunday. And I got in some decent quality on the indoor track and treadmill. I almost never run hard on either. The weird thing is, I felt good on those workouts and recovered right away. I'm starting to look forward to running season.
On Saturday we did a 5.2K tempo on the UAF track, with splits of 6:22 (HR 136), 6:05 (HR 153), 6:03 (HR 158), and 1:31 (final 400)--and that's weaving through traffic and much of it in lane 2 or 3. And yesterday (Monday) I jumped on the treadmill and after a 20 min warm up started doing reps of 2 or 3 min ranging from 5:35/mile pace to 5:50. Felt good. Feel even better today. I think I could run about 17:30 for 5K on warmer (+40s instead of -40s) and on dry pavement. Go figure.
Lamenting not getting in any long skis--3 hr or so--in prep for Tour of Anchorage or the Sonot, but when it's -23 to -47 out what can you do?
I've skied five times in two weeks now, kind of like the old days in Colorado when we usually had to drive 1.5 to 2 hr to get to some trails.
Still beats New England and much of the rest of the Lower 48 (Colorado included) this year because we know that this will pass and should have another two or three months of season left. By April that's kind of a mixed blessing.
So last week I did the best I could (two good workouts on the snow) and actually did a lot of running. 32 miles, plus a 1 hr snowshoe run (6 miles) on Sunday. And I got in some decent quality on the indoor track and treadmill. I almost never run hard on either. The weird thing is, I felt good on those workouts and recovered right away. I'm starting to look forward to running season.
On Saturday we did a 5.2K tempo on the UAF track, with splits of 6:22 (HR 136), 6:05 (HR 153), 6:03 (HR 158), and 1:31 (final 400)--and that's weaving through traffic and much of it in lane 2 or 3. And yesterday (Monday) I jumped on the treadmill and after a 20 min warm up started doing reps of 2 or 3 min ranging from 5:35/mile pace to 5:50. Felt good. Feel even better today. I think I could run about 17:30 for 5K on warmer (+40s instead of -40s) and on dry pavement. Go figure.
Lamenting not getting in any long skis--3 hr or so--in prep for Tour of Anchorage or the Sonot, but when it's -23 to -47 out what can you do?
posted by Roger at
9:39 AM
1 Comments:
Roger,
I'm right there with you regarding this cold snap. But at least I broke my all time low running record yesterday, 5 miles at -38F.
Hope to see you and your legion of blog followers at the NSCF's Backcountry Film Festival this Friday at 7:00 at Birch Hill. If we can't ski, we might as well watch movies of people skiing.
Mike
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