When in Rome, do as the Romans. Or more appropriately, when you are buried in snow, go snowshoeing! Now that the Empire State Building Run Up is behind me, I can focus all my efforts on the upcoming U.S. National Snowshoe Championships in early March. Snowshoeing takes a LOT more out of your legs, stabilizers, core than normal running does. It’s harder to recover from snowshoe training, which would probably explain my lackluster feeling all week. I’m sure that I still have some residual PTSD from the ESB race which isn’t helping either.
It’s hard to jump back into a Tabata leg press routine after a week off. It’s the last thing on earth you want to do. I talked myself into a double session of Tabata on Wednesday. My legs were ripped up and sore right up until Saturday’s race. Despite my legs feeling heavy and sore and not getting any warmup in, I somehow managed to nip 2005 U.S. Snowshoe National Champion Aaron Robertson by a second at the line for the win. It took everything I had. Saturday afternoon I was reconsidering the long drive to NH early Sunday morning for the Bear Paw Classic Snowshoe Race.
Rather than sit at home feeling like I was missing something I got up at 5:30 and headed to the race. I felt really tired on the warmup, but that didn’t stop me from trying to run Jim Johnson down in the early miles. He lost me on a long section of sinuous downhill single track through the woods. My legs were too beat up to handle the corners and pounding of the downhill. We came to a long uphill section and I made up ground on Jim, but he was already too far ahead and easily took the win. On the way home I stopped in Brattleboro, VT and did a 6 mile run around town to shake the lead out. What a gorgeous town!
- Total Training Time – 16:39:00
- Total Running Time – 11:45:04
- Total Running Miles – 65.6
Monday Feb 7th – 02:17:09
- Road Run – 7.95 miles, 1:08:42
- XC Skiing – 4.77 miles, 36:38
- Road Run – 3.75 miles, 31:49
Tuesday Feb 8th – 01:42:41
- Snowshoe – 5.43 miles, 1:22:06
- Treadmill @ 5% – 2 miles, 20:35
Wednesday Feb 9th – 03:44:25
- Snowshoe – 2.45 miles, 57:41
- Snowshoe – 2.45 miles, 54:15
- XC Skiing – 7.29 miles, 58:03
- Gym/Tabata – 8:51
- Road Run – 5.46 miles, 45:35
Thursday Feb 10th – 03:04:07
- Road Run – 10 miles, 1:24:00
- XC Skiing – 7.3 miles, 1:00:07
- Upright Rower – 40:00
Friday Feb 11th – 02:22:36
- Upright Rower – 30:00
- Snowshoe – 2.43 miles, 51:25
- XC Skiing – 3.38 miles, 1:01:11
Saturday Feb 12th – 01:37:36
- Camp Saratoga Snowshoe Race – 4.67 miles, 31:42
- Snowshoe Warmdown – 3.2 miles, 37:29
- Road Run – 3.45 miles, 28:25
Sunday Feb 13th – 01:51:14
- Road Warmup – 1 mile, 11:03
- Bear Paw Classic Snowshoe Race – 3.67 miles, 27:15
- Road Warmdown – 1.6 miles, 18:39
- Road Run – 6 miles, 54:17
To see all training data go to my Training Page.
