Sisu Year-Round Group 5: Classic Skiing

SISU Weekly Updates (our weekly e-mail reminder):

When: Tuesday June 6th, 6:30pm
Where: Battle Creek Water Park
What: Classic Rollerskiing
Coaches: Ben P, Mike N
Notes:Classic Rollerskiing - look out, here we come....again. More on upper body this week. Still balance drills too.

Our expectations were for a repeat of last week's training. The reality looked a little different because of the weather: at almost 40 C (102 F) it felt like training in a sauna. I am glad we did not have any bounding in the hills of Battle Creek West, that would have been harder. The squirts from my water bottle, the wind, rolling down the hill along Lower Afton Road between laps of double poling and some cold Gatorade from the coaches' ice chest provided the relief to make the session bearable.

This session included the following:

• Warm-up (if you can call it a warm-up when the temp hovers above 35C)
• 1 lap crunch double-pole
• 1 lap crunch-medium-full double pole
• 8 laps full double pole
• video review
• anther series of 7 full double poling (instead of the classic ski technique which I cannot do because I have skate-only roller skis)
• cool-down ski back to parking

Garmin Connect provides a great visual of the intervals, both in terms of HR and elevation

Coaches comments, especially during the video review were very helpful. During my first couple of laps Mike urged me to make sure to relax my shoulders. Correcting that was a matter of swinging my arms forward more dynamically. Subconsciously I must still quite afraid of falling on something other than snow and I have to work on turning this fear into something more akin of respect. Ben's comment on my hips and center of gravity being too far back made perfect sense and I tried to take that leap of faith of falling into my double pole plant. Amazing what a difference this makes. Both Ben and Mike gave me positive feedback, Mike said it's like cheating.

For next week I have to make sure I don't forget my helmet. Just as when biking or motorcycling I do not like to tempt fate ...