Every so often, I really, REALLY need a jolt of adrenaline, and my favorite form of this happens to be cliff jumping. Yesterday a group of us drove to the Flume, just a little ways out of Lake Placid training center, and hit up some fun jumps.
Newell laying out a backflip (Packer photo)
For the record, I did test the water in multiple points beforehand to make sure it was deep enough!
I finally went for it! (Packer photo)
The jump above the foam was really scary because you had to make sure you cleared the rocks. So you’d back up about 10 feet from the edge and sprint off the end, and right up till you pushed off you couldn’t see your landing spot because of the tree in the way. But we’ve been working on our jumps in the weight room so it was pretty safe. I mean, it was relatively safe. Whatever.
Ryan flying off the rope swing (Packer photo)
Wait....Newell can levitate??? (Packer photo)
The Lake Placid camp has been, as usual, a really high quality group of athletes making the transition from longer intervals to shorter and more intense training efforts. We kicked this off with the annual bounding interval workout up Whiteface mountain – every year you see people desperately trying to hold their technique together while bounding at L4 (race pace or harder) and then hanging from their poles at the end of the intervals. This year, the set-up was 5-7 x 3 minutes, with about 4 minutes to run/walk back down to the start.
If you want to see videos of the bounding intervals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx81MJOAAFA
And here’s the video link for the speed session we did today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU8JIiYdu34&feature=plcp
Normally with intervals (and especially L4 ones) it’s smart to leave one in the tank. Basically, I try to end my intervals feeling like if I had to, I could crank out another one and still hold my technique together. But every once in a while, I just need to be able to do an interval set right till failure, where I push myself harder than I should just so I know exactly what it feels like to be redlining. That way, I know what that feeling is so (hopefully) in a race I know when to pull back so I don’t hit the wall halfway through.
The girls group (Alex Matthews photo)
And I definitely found that tipping point…about 30 seconds from the finish of my last effort. Sweet. I was really thankful for the coaches letting me do this, and made sure to recover well so that I didn’t dig myself into a hole right at the start of camp!
Cork testing a lactate at the end of the interval session (Matthews photo)
