Monday, October 19, 2020

Maximum Wattage

Hi everyone,

This past week the team completed a volume week following our testing week. The hours ranged from 14-16 and we have been taking advantage of the nice weather while we still can! (We're past peak foliage up here, however the winter constellations are starting to appear on these chilly mornings!)

On Tuesday we had an OYO early morning run, and then a 90 min-2 hour double pole specific classic ski in the afternoon on Plains and Selleck Roads. We did drills going up Coon Road, working on getting our hips up, crunching down fast, and putting together a powerful double pole. The rest of the ski was double pole distance out on Selleck Road, which has pretty nice pavement.

Due to COVID restrictions in the gym, we have to reserve time in the Varsity room gym for 8 athletes to workout at the same time. This recently got changed to 12 athletes! We got a 6:30-8:00 AM block Wednesday morning and had a small crew for an early morning Volt workout with athletes cycling in and out. For a lot of the team that weren't able to access gyms this summer and during quarantine, this was a nice change of pace to have a somewhat normal strength session. Here's a photo of us in the gym- masks required of course!

  In the afternoon, the team did a two hour distance skate ski with speeds at Higley Flow. These speeds weren't your everyday average speeds! The coaches set up a nice course in the parking lot at Higley where we weaved in and out of cones, hopping and testing our abilities around corners. It made the speeds much more interesting!


On Thursday, some members of the team headed out to Downerville State Forest to go mountain biking for practice, while others stayed behind to do a two hour distance run around Canton. I was part of the running group, and we made a nice loop starting on the Kip/Saddlemire trails, out to the cemetery in town, over and around the Remington loop, and back to campus in exactly two hours. 

On Friday, we did the infamous classic intervals at Whites Hill in Parishville. It was rainy and chilly when we first started, but cleared up by the end. The intervals were ten minutes long total, which meant that ETown and Dana drove us down to the base once we reached the top, so we could finish out the interval sets using the uphill. I love these intervals because they end up being fun, long grind sessions, but our "pit crew" is always just around the corner to take you back down, so you can do it again. Thank you Dana and ETown!

On Saturday, we did an over-distance skate ski starting from school and skiing out towards West Potsdam and finishing near Hannawa Falls. It was sunny, but chilly when we first started; it warmed up quickly when we got moving. Most people on the team finished around three hours, but the week wasn't over just yet!

On Sunday, the team went to Higley to do L4 bounding intervals on the Raquette River Loop, which is behind the campsites on the end of the far right of the campground. ETown and Dana set up four sets of cones throughout the loop, indicating the L4 zones, and a recovery in-between (our heart rates were around L3 in the "offs" as most bounding workouts tend to go). This was a fun way to end the week, and really hammer out any energy still left in our legs. In the afternoon, between homework sessions, there was an optional OYO recovery session for the team to tack on more time for the week.

The team did a great job this week, and we're all looking forward to our upcoming recovery week! Starting today, we'll be doing an easy classic rollerski!

Until next time,

Gabby '21

No comments: