Alaska Camp Part 2: A slightly nerdy deep-dive into a week of training in Anchorage

After finishing up week one, I can say that went well–really well. I executed most sessions to the best of my ability and executed the goals I had set out for myself for this first week of camp. This post will include a review of the training I did this first week in Anchorage including some data points (click on the links to the workouts on strava for your number crunching needs) and some general explanation of how I approach training sessions on the micro-level. Setting weekly process goals, even if I don’t actually write them down, is important to how I approach training, so I suppose it would make sense to start there.

Goals for the week

• Don’t overdo it with the much more important week on the glacier coming up

• Make use of different, fast training partners

• Use new sets of eyes (different coaches) to hammer technique work

• Have fun in a completely new environment

  These goals are ranked in importance, as in the first one is more important than any of the others. The training I do on the glacier is far more important than eeking out a little bit more volume during the dryland week. It would have been easy to get carried away, but remembering I have a much harder week coming was in the back of my mind this whole week.

  Outline of the week

  This week of training was planned to be about as standard as they come. It included one L3 session on rollerskis, one L4 session running with poles, one longer speed or L5 session depending on how you classify 45” intervals, and a pure speed session. This is a format that I have seen many times through a couple different coaches. I also aimed to train somewhere between 20 and 24 hours this week depending on how I felt. All of this combines to be a super manageable week that I was excited to try and execute.

  Monday: AM: 8x45” Double Poll PM: Distance Trail Run

  I touched on this briefly in Part 1, but feeling at all ok for this DP session was a bonus. Beginning as soon as I touched down in Anchorage around 10pm on Sunday night, I was looking for any reason to not do this session. Come Monday, I had slept well, woke up feeling good and felt good warming up. This gave me the green light to do a couple intervals conservatively–a little bit slower than sprint qualifier pace. After these felt good, I gave myself the green light to treat the session like any other and start pushing. Another factor I wanted to keep an eye on was how my Heart Rate was responding to these short, hard efforts. Looking back at the HR data, I could see that it was rising quickly to a relatively high value and falling back down in a reasonable amount of time. I took this as evidence of being well-rested and not being impacted negatively from the long travel the day prior.

  In the afternoon, a bunch of APU skiers and most of the members of the national team that were around went on a run above Anchorage near Glen Alps. This was a perfect recipe for an unproductively fast session. Sessions like these are great opportunities to socialize, and running uphill isn’t exactly my strong suit. As I mentioned in Part 1, it’s really easy to get carried away during an easy session when you’re around people you don’t train with often. This, combined with the fact that I didn’t really want to get dropped and left alone in close proximity to animals that would be happy to eat me left me pushing way too hard at points during this run. This was a training mistake, but you know, que sera sera.

Tuesday: AM: L3 Skate ~60 Minutes on time PM: Strength

L3 skate sessions are always some of my favorite summer workouts and this one was no exception. Every club has their go-to spots for L3 sessions, Craftsbury’s of course being our beautiful, perfect, rollerski loop, and it seems as if Kincaid is a favorite of the APU program. For this workout, it was imperative that I start alone. The interval loop started out with a fairly steep, four minute climb which if taken too hard on the first int, could have been a day ruiner. At least for me, a couple of hard minutes at the beginning of an L3 session can have an outsized negative impact on the rest of the intervals. Being alone, I could easily manage intensity and build into the workout. This is an approach that I have learned over the past few years which has allowed me to execute L3 sessions much more often. Once I was really warmed up and had a few intervals under my belt, I started working into groups and trying to ski behind people who are slightly faster than I am. Even as the speed and intensity increased later in the workout, the cautious start allowed me to pull respectable lactates 40 and 60 minutes into the workout while moving much faster.

Strength is strength. We got to use the APU gym which was pretty sweet. There is a good amount of space and plenty of squat and bench racks. The only possibly noteworthy aspect of the strength I’m doing is the inclusion of Olympic lifts (cleaning and snatching). This topic could be worthy of its own post, so I’ll leave it at that.

Wednesday: AM: OD Classic PM: Distance Skate

The only interesting aspect of Wednesday’s training was how much I loved the Moose Loop. The Moose Loop is a loop around Anchorage that consists of probably 99% bike paths. There are plenty of spectacular views, and the terrain is pretty flat, perfect for a nice long double pole. The best part is that it is available right from the front door of the house we are staying in! Pretty ideal.

Wednesday was a good day to pack on the volume a bit, so we went back out for a skate rollerski near Campbell Air Strip. Without tucking much, I hit nearly 40mph on this ski–a bit too fast for my liking. I’m not sure if I’ll be itching to repeat that loop anytime soon.

Thursday: AM: Skate Speeds 15x10-15” PM: Distance Classic

The Thursday morning workout was one that I was really stoked about. Getting to rip around on skate skis with Gus and JC was awesome. Unfortunately, I snapped a ski shaft about halfway through the session during a speed. Simply staying on my feet was an impressive showing of agility if you ask me... Despite this, there were a couple really exciting things about this session.

1. I felt really quick and snappy. The first three days of camp were far from easy on the training side of things, and feeling like I was working at or near my top speed during this workout was encouraging

2. For the first time this summer, I felt like my skate technique was starting to click at high speeds. I have been working on two major things: making sure that I am standing stall

when my pole tips make contact with the pavement and driving my knee forward without leaving my pushing leg behind.

Pole tips right around the wheels. Knees are mostly over the toes which allows all of my mass to be forward and driving onto the poles.

This is the moment before my rear leg picks back off the group to start the next cycle. My knee is nicely over my toe and my hips are not excessively far back.

Thursday afternoon was some relaxing easy distance by myself. I got to see a plane landing closeup!

Friday: AM: L4 Running w/ Poles PM: Strength

This session, being deep into a relatively hard week and in such close proximity to the glacier, could have been the first on the chopping block. Despite this, I felt great when I woke up and even better when warming up, so the session was a go. The plan for this session was to get in 20-30 minutes of controlled L4 on Spencer’s at hillside park. Controlled L4 is a bit of an oxymoron, but for this session, I was trying to get to how I’d feel in a well-paced 10k or 15k–somewhere in the 6-10 mmol/L lactate range. I only took lactates on the first two L4 intervals (5.5 and 6.7) because once I had confirmed that the feeling corresponded with lactates there wasn’t much reason to keep measuring. Taking lactates during L4 sessions isn’t entirely necessary, it can be a really nice way to both a: orient the rest of the workout based on an early reading or b: monitor how well your anaerobic systems are functioning (inability to pull high lactates during an intense workout could indicate being tired). The workout ended up being 5 reps of the hill with the first one taking 5:30 and eventually negative splitting down to 5:13 on the last rep. I wouldn’t have done a 5th if anything had gone wrong or felt off over the course of this workout, but everything kept going right! It’s always fun to nail a session.

Saturday: AM: OD Run/Hike PM: Off

Saturday’s workout was a treat. Run/hikes in the mountains have always been the easiest long workouts for me mentally and this one was no exception. The route was almost 100% above treeline and included more runnable ridgeline than I think I have ever experienced.

Reflecting back on the goals I had set out for myself this week, I’m pretty happy with how it went. I’m feeling really good energy-wise and excited for a hard week of training on the glacier. Be sure to check back in next week for a recap of some summer skiing!