Good morning and welcome to the only blog by people crazier than you.

It has been a long, but good, week.  I have to keep my act together for two more weeks before I can have a little break.

Last Sunday I raced at Snowbasin, Utah at the Xterra Winter Worlds.  It was a great race, minus the snowshoeing, which I haven’t done in over seven years.  Needless to say, I ate it a few times.  And even then I am no more motivated to go practice that sport.  Give me skiing any day.  I finished 5th and would recommend that race to anyone who’s into winter sports.

My Week in Review:
Monday:  I skied easy for 30 minutes to get the legs moving after driving in the car.
Tuesday:  It snowed at the resort so we skied all day till our legs wobbled.  The steeps, the steeps, the steeps!!!! Was supposed to do intervals but didn’t feel peppy enough to do them right so I jogged (easy) for an hour.
Wednesday:  Skate skied up Kebbler pass on my Rando gear.  This would not be something that I would normally do but we have a back country ski race next weekend that will require a bit of skating on our rando gear so I might as well practice.  Was out for one and half hours.
Thursday:  Starting to feel better in general (at this point I have not even been done with the Patagonia Expedition race three weeks).  Did intervals, which hurt like hell, up Snod Grass, a local favorite spot.  Warmed up and then did 4 five minute sessions.  Felt about 80-90 %.  YEAH!!  I raced the locals rando race at Crested Butte Mt Resort.  Only 1 hour and 10 minutes. It was really more intervals: three sets of 16 minutes hard, 6 easy.  I actually felt pretty good.  Still not 100% but good.
Friday:  Skied the ski area.  It was sunny and wonderful.
Saturday:  Skied past the Friends Hut with Tucker up to the ridge.  It was the best trip I have ever had to the Friends hut.  I took us a little bit less than three hours to get to the hut and my heart rate didn’t get over 140 beats per minute.  It felt awesome.  Then the descent was off the hook.  Total time out, less than 6 hours. Yep, I do live in Paradise.
So that brings me to today and I am going to do something easy, like another jog.

Team Goal of the Week:
The team is excited to be signed up and racing Primal Quest.  That being said we are all committed to training and doing littler races between now and then.  I know Travis snowshoe raced last weekend (he finished 2nd at the North American Snowshoeing Championships in Beaver Creek, CO), while JB and Sully are focusing on training for the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse in two weeks.

Tip of the Week:
If you actually read the day-by-day report of my training you will see that I was supposed to do intervals but opted out on Tuesday.  I know that to be faster I have to do them but I also know that doing them (for lack of a better term) half-assed is even worse.  Unless you just got done with a 7 day race you probably aren’t to tired to do intervals so go do them.  But make sure you do them right and do them hard!!!

Gear Highlight:
Tucker and I are going to have to modify some gear for the Elk Mt. Grand Traverse.  Mostly his boots and skins and just make sure that he can transition fast.  We are planning on getting together next week to work out all the kinks.

Next up, Rando (ski mountaineering) Nationals in Jackson Hole this weekend.  I am pretty pumped!!!

Signing off,
Jari

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 10:06 am and is filed under Primal Quest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.