In training you get a bunch of highs and lows. Sometimes it’s on purpose – you plan to have a big week with a lot of intensity or hours (or both, yikes!) and then you have a smaller week to let your body recover and absorb all that training. Sometimes you have awesome workouts where you’re pretty sure you’re invincible and you might never get tired, and sometimes you have those days where for some reason you can’t get your body to cooperate. Usually, you get a big mix of both and a whole lot of days somewhere in the middle!
The guys doing an interval together (photo by Reese Brown/SIA Images)
This week was planned to be a nice easy recovery week for me, to recover from the camp in Norway and the travel back to the States, and let my body prep for the upcoming camp in Alaska. Our next US Ski Team camp will be July 6-20 in Anchorage, and I’m excited to get back up there for some glacier skiing and fun adventure runs!
Getting some coaching from Cork (photo by Reese Brown/SIA Images)
But just because this week is an “easy” week doesn’t mean that each and every workout can’t be high quality! We had a few workouts with the SMS juniors, which is always really fun. I love seeing them get stronger and faster each year, and some of them I’ve known since my first year out east so it’s been cool watching their technique and fitness improve summer after summer! One of my favorite workouts is when we coach the juniors in agility as our warmup before strength training. We do this about 3 times a week (depending on the schedule) and it’s a mix of foot drills and roller ski agility. These photos are actually from a few weeks ago but I hadn’t put them up yet!
Foot drills across the soccer field. (photo by Sverre Caldwell)
Soccer – on skate skis! (photo by Reese Brown/SIA Images)
Cone drills and hurdle jumps! (photo from Sverre Caldwell)
We also had a really good quality classic interval session as a group. The juniors were doing intensity on the same road so they could hop in behind us for part (or all!) of an interval. Liz Stephen is also visiting us this week so it was sweet to have her as part of our pace train! As you might be able to tell, we had some guests this week – Reese Brown was here taking some awesome training photos for us and Courtney Harkins from USSA to use!
Girls interval train, rolling out (photo by Reese Brown/SIA Images)
Julia hopping in with me on my last interval (photo from Sverre Caldwell)
Working together to get faster! (photo from Reese Brown/SIA Images)
Andy and Erika cooling down together. (photo from Reese Brown/SIA Images)
Ben, combining bounding with a pickup game of football. Gym time can be pretty fun sometimes! (photo from Reese Brown/SIA Images)
Me, getting after the med ball slams in the gym (photo from Reese Brown/SIA Images)
So now it’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy the 4th of July festivities this weekend. We had our annual roller ski through Londonderry in the Independence Day Parade, which was a ton of fun! We got a lot of “wow, those things look fun!”, “don’t you know it’s summer?” and “can I try it?!?!” comments. The fireworks on the various mountain ski resorts near our house have all started going and I expect to see a lot of bright lights the next few nights!
Andy doing some fancy footwork on his “road skis” (photo from Erika Flowers)
Anne passing out candy (photo from Erika Flowers)
Roller skiing through the parade! (photo from Jessie Heydt)
Have a safe and happy 4th of July everyone!
