All I Want for Christmas is a Volume Block

Hello Skipost fans! From now until up through the Olympics, I’ll be posting weekly to share with you my physical and mental preparation for the games. As of now, I have seven weeks until the classic sprint (the race I hope to start at the Olympics) with ample opportunity for racing, training, and rest. After a successful period one of the World Cup, including some solid progress in classic sprinting and a career best in skating, I’m now in Davos, Switzerland for Christmas. 

I’m in Davos for 12 days between the end of Period one and the beginning of the Tour de Ski in Toblach, Italy. There are plenty of different ways to approach how to manage this training block, but with how the last couple months have gone, there is a pretty clear path forward. In the last five weeks, I haven’t trained more than 11 hours and going back three months, I’m averaging merely 12.5 hours a week. This training plan has left me very sharp and rested for quite a long time and has paid off in the best results of my life. However, when overall training volume is cut down for long enough, the feeling of being “sharp” can give way to burning out. With a long season still to come, I need to use any opportunities in breaks between periods of racing to build up a little bit of volume. Doing this a week out from the tour can be especially beneficial, but it must be done carefully, for starting the tour tired is not smart. 

The Crib

So that is one goal for the first week of the Christmas break: relatively high volume. The second most important part of the reprieve in racing is getting some mental rest. The five weeks stretching from arriving in Muonio for the world cup pre camp spanning through the Davos world cup are not hard physically, in fact they are quite easy because of the emphasis on physical rest. On the other hand, training very little while also trying to optimize every part of my life to perform as well as possible on race day is quite mentally taxing. Conveniently, mental rest–at least the kind I’m looking for–can coincide quite nicely with adding some physical strain. Going out and skiing 3 to 4 hours a day is almost the exact opposite of sitting in a hotel room all day and stressing about upcoming races.

Potatoes and Eggs 

If I’m feeling good about where I am mentally and physically, that is I’m happy and my body is handling the additional volume well, my only specific training focus of this break is some minor work on classic sprinting. The classic sprint in Val di Fiemme during the tour may very well end up being one of the most important races of the year for me because of the implications in deciding who starts the classic sprint there later during the Olympics. Because of this, I want to take any opportunities I have to train specifically for that course. One of my biggest weaknesses in skiing is my double poling technique when I get tired. When I’m exhausted I stop getting up the high point of the double pole stroke and start collapsing early.

Shepherd’s Pie

A workout that I really like for this that I completed last Sunday is 40/20/20s. The workout is 40 seconds on at qualifier pace, 20 seconds off then 20 seconds all out. I will usually take 4-6 minutes between reps and repeat 4 to 8 times depending on the goal of the session or what time of year it is. This time, because I’m merely trying to work on technique and sharpening up what I already know I can do, I only did 4 reps. This workout is best done on a hill that takes 40 seconds with a downhill over the top so that you can maintain speed into the last 20 second burst of the interval. The only other key sessions I had planned for this block was an L3 double pole session the first Thursday I was here, skate speeds this past Tuesday, and a short L4 classic workout with some double pole finishes at the end (the same workout I did in Trondheim as prep for Davos) this past Wednesday.

Comically large sandwich and a beer

This interval progression is a bit backwards from what I usually do. Generally, I will always do the shorter, faster intervals for early in weeks or blocks before the training load begins to wear me down and save the longer, slower L3 sessions for deeper into training blocks. The Christmas block was different for a few important reasons. First of all, I had a very hard, stressful weekend right before it started. For me, going through the final in a sprint is really taxing, and I ended up racing the 10k the next day which really tuckered me out. This made the three full days I took off from intensity of any kind crucial. Additionally, I chose to do an L3 double pole session as my first intensity of the week because L3 double pole is very easy aerobically and quite hard muscularly. Theoretically, if I kept that session in check and kept all of the easy volume easy, I would still be rested enough to execute a short fast workout on Sunday. 

After Sunday, I got back into my normal routine in the winter: rest and intensity. This week I only trained enough volume to keep me feeling good and focused all of my energy on a key session on Wednesday (3x5’ L4 + 3x15” finishing sprint) and being as rested as possible coming into the tour. As far as training goes, I am very happy with how the Christmas break went. I was able to ski for just under 20 hours during the first week, and I executed the intensity sessions well. I really like this framing for a training block: having a process goal (lots of easy volume) that pairs with a performance goal (earn the start at the olympics and ski well at the olympics if I get it). All of my intensity is geared toward this performance goal, but having the process goal at the forefront of my mind takes a bit of pressure off of those hyper-specific sessions is comforting.

Very European

However, my life during the break was not only training. If it was, I wouldn’t have done a very good job of my goal of coming out of this break mentally rested. I’m staying with Gus Schumacher, Ben Ogden, Zanden McMullen, and Luke Jager over Christmas which has been delightful to say the least. Being able to spend time with good friends during a time where I’d really like to be with my family is really important. We celebrated my birthday on the 17th, had a nice Christmas dinner, and watched more than our fair share of movies over our time in Davos. With how much time we spend isolated in hotel rooms during the season, it is crucial to make use of these times when we have a nice living room and kitchen to hang out together in and take our minds completely off of skiing for a bit. 

By the time this is posted, I will be in Toblach getting ready for my second Tour de Ski. I have no idea how I will handle the repeated distance racing this time around, for it was so much less of a focus for me than it was last year when I had NCAA skiing to train for. Regardless, I’m very happy with how this last little block of training has gone, and I’m happy to say that I’m in a good physical and mental state to attack the rest of this season.

Christmas Ski!