Week 5 –

U23 Women’s Team in SoHo last year (L-R: Fred Vezina, Katherine Stewart-Jones, Jenn Jackson, Dahria Beatty. Missing: Maya MacIsaac-Jones)

If the furnace is hot enough, anything will burn.

If you eat a bit of everything, and nothing in excess, you’ll be fine.

Food is great, don’t let it stress you out.

You need food to grow. Young athletes in particular need to eat well and eat lots. Few things scare me more than seeing or hearing about kids in sport “dieting” or restricting what they eat.

Until you’re through puberty, don’t even think about it. If you’re not getting enough energy and proper nutrients into your body as you’re still growing it can seriously mess with your bone density, hormones, and immune system.

Energy in, energy out.

Z4 classic World Champs sprint prep –  25 January 2017

I did this workout with Dahria Beatty and Maya MacIsaac-Jones, and National Team/World Cup Academy coach Chris Jeffries during the World Championship pre-camp in Canmore last year. It didn’t feel awesome, that’s for sure… but it was one of only a handful of intensities I actually did with other people last winter, and I definitely appreciated the extra push from a couple first class athletes and friends.

We tried to emulate some of the course elements for Soliders Hollow with the terrain at the Canmore Nordic Centre. Alternating the 2-minute efforts with a longer sustained climb out of the stadium for one, then a shorter hard climb followed by a fast, flatter second half for the other.

That day, most athletes did a sprint simulations or distance TTs (according to their focus for Worlds), and a handful did other specific workouts like us. Personally, I like doing a race-breakdown type workout leading up to a race. It forces the hard effort, but not with quite as high of a load as simulations.

Fitness won’t change much over just, say – two weeks leading up to a race, but how fast you move and your max outputs can. Figuring out how to best unload training stress and wind up race form takes practice and experimentation. No secret recipe, but everyone has their own special spice or sauce to thrown on.

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Z4 intensity w Dahria and Maya
2x4min Z3+
4x2min Z4

Int time – HR avg/max – rest
4:06 – 164/178 – 1:52
4:00 – 171/181 – 4:58
2:08 – 171/184 – 2:27
2:08 – 167/182 – 3:08 (flatter terrain)
2:00 – 173/181 – 3:35
2:32 – 166/176 – / (flatter terrain)

Uhm yah, I suffered a lot.
Definitely hurting for speed today. Didn’t have much jam but I think this was a good wake-up-call for the body now that it’s time to sharpen up for the races next week.

We didn’t have a track for the Z3, so it was a bit of a harder effort and not smooth or relaxed. The Z4 was a battle to hold on, but I think it was good because I had to fight for it. HR not going up that high and also not dropping well. Fatigue from the long skis at Shark and getting hit with the altitude acclimatization too.

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Next post Tuesday,