2020 Marathon Training Tips #2 - 12/23/19

from Caitlin & Adam of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project

This winter, Craftsbury Green Racing Project athletes Caitlin Patterson and Adam Martin are offering weekly guidance via an email newsletter, to help you prepare for the Craftsbury Marathon or any other ski marathon. We (Caitlin & Adam) hope that this will be useful for those training for their first ski race as well as veterans of many previous marathons. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

Each week, we will explain a suggested workout and a technique tip that we feel is important to think about. While this newsletter will not constitute a full training plan, we hope that you can incorporate these suggestions into your preparation in order to arrive at the start line with more confidence in your efficiency and fitness!

The Workout: Continuous Natural Intervals

Warm up: 30 minutes easy ski. Make sure your kick wax works if you’re classic skiing, touch it up if needed.

Workout: 30-60 minutes smooth and conservative L3 skiing. L3 is a fast but very manageable pace, where your heart rate and breathing are elevated but you are not at an all-out race effort; you might be at the pace that you would hold for a 50k race, but you’re only holding it today for 30-60 minutes. Choose rolling, varied terrain with plenty of corners, gentle uphills, and downhills. If you really want to hammer out some hills, by all means choose a hilly course, but I recommend pretty mellow terrain without any huge climbs. The focus is going to be on smooth motions and well-executed transitions (see week #1 technique tips here), not a huge amount of exertion.

Cool down: 15-30 minutes easy skiing. Take a few moments during your cool down to reflect on how well you executed transitions during the L3 time. If there were certain terrain features that felt less polished, pick one type and do a few repeats of that feature at moderate to higher speed to see if you can refine the motion.

This workout is a good one for early in your ski season, once you’ve reacquainted yourself with the feel of snow. You may be feeling somewhat more confident and stable than during your first few sessions, but you still need to touch up the smoothness of the motions, and this will be a great workout to do that. Long, moderate-paced intervals like this train your body to shuttle and process lactate produced from anaerobic metabolism. This will improve your capacity to recover during races, on downhills or wherever you’re able to relax. In addition, there are big neuromuscular benefits to spending more time skiing closer to race pace. Incorporate this workout into your training once a week, or once every two weeks, in the time period several weeks to several months out from your marathon event.

Technique Tip: Think about complete weight transfer

In cross-country skiing, efficiency is a big component of both speed and enjoyment. Within any skiing stride (V2 to classic striding), it's important to glide on each ski and allow your body to relax, and successful weight transfer is essential.

A simple way to improve is to consciously think about gliding a moment longer on each ski and shifting all of your body weight to one leg. This can be applied in every skiing technique except double poling. If you are skating, it is important to think about also shifting your weight onto your "off" leg in V1.

To work on single leg balance, try poling twice on each leg in V2. Tap the ground with your poles once and then pole a second time on each leg. Balancing on a single leg requires you to begin by first fully transferring your weight.

While you are skiing, if you want to assess how well you are transferring your weight, try counting for 3 seconds at the end of your stroke. Hopefully you will feel capable of riding your ski until it stops. However, if you feel an impulse to begin the next stroke right away, or after only a second, it may be an indication that your weight wasn't fully transferred.

Your Authors

Caitlin Patterson is a member of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project elite team and the US Ski Team. She is an 8-time US National Champion, a 2018 Olympian and a 2019 World Championship team member. Caitlin considers herself a distance specialist, racing primarily 5k to 30k events, but loves the high-paced action of sprint heats too.

Adam Martin is in his third year training and racing with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project. He has started 8 World Cups and raced in the 2019 World Championships. Last year Adam won the freestyle Craftsbury Marathon. He is supported by Fischer skis and boots and Swix poles.

The Green Racing Project is an elite team of post-collegiate athletes who train and live in Craftsbury, Vermont. Their athletic dreams are supported by the Craftsbury Outdoor Center and Concept 2. In return for this support, the athletes engage in professional development by working on a variety of projects at the Outdoor Center.

Questions or Feedback?

Send feedback about this newsletter, or requests for future content, to caitlinpattersonskier@gmail.com. While we can't promise to respond to every request, we'd love to hear what topics are most interesting and write content that will help you become more comfortable on skis!