Pre Season Conditioning

[GrimSurfer]

I’m not competing for a medal. Those days are long past. I’m good with that.

I’m training to stay fit, so I’m able to do the things I want to do… which has nothing to do with providing I’m as fast as a 20 year old. Guess what? I’m not.

Why is that? Because mortals lose ~1 bpm in max pulse every year after the age of 20. That is, incidentally, one of the reasons why VO2 Max drops off with age. (VO2 Max doesn’t necessarily fall off as quickly, provided one remains active).

You talk about speed and safety. These are different things. Faster is faster. Safe is safer.

One sees this on the trail at -30C, when a fast guy goes whizzing past in a Gucci shell and no pack. If an accident happens 10k up the tree line (the back country is, after all, an uncontrolled environment), that guy is in a very precarious position.

Me? I go out like a member of the Alpini or Alpine Corps. Wind smock, layered, carrying fluids, a pack, comms, nav, and safety supplies. This slows me down, but it is sensible and safe. This comes from a certain amount of bush experience.

Now onto aerobic threshold…

If you were able to improve your VO2 Max, you’d increase your aerobic threshold. This would allow you to sustain your pace with greater ease so that, when it came time to push into the anaerobic zone (sprint up a hill or to the finish), you’d be able to do so muscularly.

In a contest between two otherwise equal skiers, the one with greater oxygen intake and utilization will win. Provided all other things (equipment, technique, determination, strategy) are the same. They’re often not.

This doesn’t mean that VO2 Max no longer fulfills a practical purpose. It does. But it’s a heck of a lot easier to measure, quantify and compare that minor differences in technique, levels of determination, etc. it’s also a measure of physiology. The others are not.

[bauerb]

I personally believe that "racing is a celebration of training"...I think Courtney Dewalter said that. I train hard and I race hard and I have the time of my life doing it. all year long I travel to cool places and compete in the best races and meet the best people from elites to first-timers.
I started racing Nordic again this winter after 34 years away from Nordic skiing. in my first race back I got a lycra bib...not one made out of crinkly paper with stretch cords to hold it. I wore a chip around my ankle and started with a count down beeper and a wand!! I have seen these things on TV but never been in them. my point is that I love everything about racing even the little things like numbers and wands. when the gun goes off I race as hard as I possibly can and evaluate my performance against myself first, then everyone else. I know that 100's of hours of training go into a 2 hr race, and I love it.

if I don't do things to make myself feel a little nervous and excited on a regular basis, then I'm not living enough.

[GrimSurfer]

Glad you like the stoke. I do it for the exercise, tbh.

[GrimSurfer]

I’ve done some inconclusive thinking about fitness over the years. Some of this has reflected on early childhood and adult development. The “organic” kind…

It also applies to dogs, whose VO2 Max can greatly exceed that of humans. (Sled dogs have VO2 Max values well over 100).

Oxygen uptake and utilization is dreadfully low in babies and puppies. As they mature, they intuitively engage in activities to change this. CV activity usually revolves around bursts, the results of which invariably lead to utter exhaustion and sleep. The similarities aren’t surprising given that dogs are hunters, as were many humans, until a thousand years ago or so.

The cycles resemble HIIT, which has positive CV and musculoskeletal effects. With maturity, humans and dogs gain enough CV and musculoskeletal capacity for longer duration activities. We call this endurance, though a great deal of it is only possible when CV and musculoskeletal performance exceed a certain threshold.

The fact that this occurs naturally and persistently (try streaming a toddler or puppy towards endurance… utter failure), suggests that natural forces are at play. Dogs hold onto this throughout their lives (even an elderly, sedentary dog will become frisky on a regular and predictable, basis). Many humans eschew it because, well, it seems rather pointless.

The inconclusive aspects of my thinking on this matter end with questions about exercise mixes. I would observe, however, that the trend humans follow from plyometric type exercise to longer, steady state exercise affects the majority. It isn’t necessarily the case for athletes… even senior ones. It also isn’t the case for hunter-gatherer societies like bushmen in Africa.

So I’m left wondering what, if any conclusions can be drawn from this…

[bauerb]

I have no idea dude, but this is what my uphill intervals looked like this morning. elevation 7500 - 8,000ft. avg rate of climb about 2700ft/hour which is not horrible for me. pacing so that you don't fade over 4 reps is a thing I'm still working on...I track fade by distance covered and avg HR. my distance did not fade today, but my avg HR went down 2bpm over the total reps...not horrible, but I want to see the trend reversed

I don't love skiing in the dark with a headlight, but I guess thats why headlights were created .

[GrimSurfer]

Looks like a great workout.

What’s the difference in the orange and red traces (the indices suggest heart rate but the scales are offset)? What do the green traces signify?

[bauerb]

green is speed, orange is RPM( cadence)...but looks like junk data and is not something I care about anyway, red is HR.

[GrimSurfer]

Got it. Thanks.

It looks like you pause between cycles to get HR down to ~100, which is a feature in some interval programmes (100 is often considered “recovered” from a tissue O2 perspective). Or it could be a speed scaling issue… some apps “find zero” below a certain speed.

I measure fade differently in my routines. Not better, just differently.

I hold speed and observe how HR climbs or plateaus. Doing this above my aerobic threshold puts me progressively into higher oxygen debt until I hit max HR (where I’m comfortable staying for several minutes by tapering my speed). Often it’s more transitional… like on a fixed speed run, where I go from Zone 2 to nibble into Zone 5.

Skiing for me usually involves some sort of one lap circuit over varying terrain. No less than 5k but mostly in the 7-15k range. I can observe HR response to speed and terrain but I can’t clearly determine fade because at no point am I crossing the same ground twice (or thrice). Since it’s colder, I don’s experience cardiac drift. HR is purely a function of load.

I almost never go below Zone 4 during a ski session. This is different to my treadmill HIITs, where my heart rate follows an upward sinusoidal pattern (culminating in 2 or 3 reps of max HR for five minutes)… pretty similar to your ski sessions.

So the way in which we collect fitness data is different, but the general pattern of CV activity is the same… steady state or cyclic loads… from Zone 2 to Zone 5… resulting in some kind of observable reduction in performance.

[bauerb]

the protocol I follow is 8 min on, 6 min off. I use that 6 mins to ski back down the mountain. sometimes I will do all intervals without descending and keep going up, other days I like to ski the same section multiple times to compare

last season I overtrained myself in Zone 4+. the result was that I raced entirely anaerobically( ADS) . I hired a coach last spring and the results have been impressive. so now I do what he says, including using my watch on Z1/recovery days to make sure I go easy enough.

[GrimSurfer]

That seems to be the ticket. Overtraining doesn’t accomplish as much as remaining well in limits. That’s what I’m struggling to follow these days…