For the last four years, winter for me has been the tale of balancing as much skiing as possible with as much running as possible and praying that all that time on feet is making me a stronger endurance athlete. This year an additional priority was getting lots of volunteer sessions in with Oregon Adaptive Sports, an amazing organization that works tirelessly to make wilderness activities accessible to all.
February:
- 8 ski days
- 6 month marathon training plan started Feb 22 – the couple of weeks before this involved a break from running and generally lower activity to get psyched up mentally and physically
- continued PT strength work focusing on gluteals and hamstrings
March:
- 11 ski days
- weekly run mileage: 25; 31; 17; 31 – endurance building block. Generally, this plan entails 3 tough/building weeks followed by 1 recovery week (low mileage, all easy) – which I love. It’s easier to put in the focused, demanding work knowing that you get a mini-vacation every fourth week. I’m having to move the weeks around a little at times to accommodate my race schedule, but that’s a small price to pay considering I’M GETTING TO RACE!!!
- PT strength work
April:
- 2 ski days [insert sad face]
- weekly run mileage: 37; 45; 14; 34 – speed building block. Hitting the same track times I did during my Boston qualifying training 3 years ago (and my legs are actually feeling stronger, likely due to all that PT work).
- PT strength work + adding in more upper body/back/arms. Not sure when climbing will come back into my life, so I need to really work to gain back some of that strength.
