Welcome to training Period 12.
As long as the snow is here, let’s make the most of it and enjoy some relaxed training without stressing about being fully prepared for the main event. If your fitness level was up to par for the big day, continue to ride that momentum. Consider exploring another ski marathon or perhaps a multi-disciplinary event, such as a sea-to-ski adventure. If things didn’t go as planned on the big day, it could be the perfect opportunity to begin gearing up for next year’s event.
March is also a great time to go out for some enjoyable spring skis, either hitting up morning crust for a cruise or going for fun in the sun with pleasurable afternoon slush ski using some skins. Have fun enjoying winter’s last gasps. Whatever you are up to, keep training for another 4-6 weeks before taking some downtime to recover from the year of training.
Enjoy the 2024 American Birkebeiner Skate Elite Women’s and Men’s 50K Race Coverage
Special gratitude goes to the Central Cross Country Skiing (CXC) and the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation (ABSF) for their work on the video production of this event.
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Each period, we will end with this advice since it is so important:
As you plan your weeks and evaluate your training, consider how you use the training plan. It is written to be a blueprint and a guide for your training and is not written knowing in advance what conflicts you may have with training in any given week. Therefore, many weeks can be done as scheduled. However, if you have to swap days or weeks out on account of your non-training life, with good planning, it can be done with great success, provided you are giving thought to the swapping.
When it comes time to plan your training week, sometimes it’s helpful to know which workouts take precedence over others. This is particularly useful if a skier has other obligations outside of skiing (work, personal life, etc.) that may interfere with the amount of training one can devote during the week. Thus, adjustments must be made.
For example, let’s say you have a week at work where you will have heavy time demands and stress, and the schedule says it is the third week of the period, which is our big week. So it may be best to hold off on the third week and swap it with Week 4 – our easy week to recover, and then maybe make a slight adjustment in Week 1 of the following period.
You can also swap out days on account of life outside of your training plan. Just remember, as you do that, it is ideal to follow a hard followed by an easy pattern of days.
To make adjustments to the plan that won’t dilute the integrity of the training program, we have a few pointers for planning a training week.
Read the advisory on scheduling workouts, swapping out ski-specific activities for alternative exercise modes, etc., here: bit.ly/workout-substitution.
– Cheers, see you next month!
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