2020 Marathon Training Tips #8 - 2/10/2020

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!

While the 2020 Craftsbury Marathon is complete, we will continue to share training tips for several more weeks, through the American Birkebeiner. 

The 2020 Craftsbury Marathon brought two great days of racing during the first weekend of February. Full results are listed here, and photos from both days can be found on the Craftsbury Outdoor Center's facebook page.

The Workout: 30-30s

Another high quality intensity workout that you can put into a normal week of training is the “30-30”.

Warm up: Ski easy for 20-30 minutes. Towards the end of your warm up, add a few short speeds where you accelerate during 10 seconds from an easy pace to nearly your top speed for a few strides.

Intensity: 10 to 15 minutes worth of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off.

The “on” time is hard skiing, aiming for faster skiing than your race pace. However you also want to set a pace and effort level for the 30 seconds that is sustainable to hold for all of your 30 second speeds through to the end. Therefore it is advisable to start conservatively for the first two or three, because the difficulty of the workout will build up and you will feel yourself working harder to hold the same pace later in your set.

The “off” time is skiing at an easy pace - not stopping, but continuing to move. During both on and off time, you should focus on keeping your technique together and your skiing strong and stable. Continuing to ski during the rest periods ensures that you’ll be practicing a lot of transitions from slow to faster speed, and it also helps your body adapt and figure out how to recover while continuing to ski. Speed shifts and recovery on the fly are both extremely useful skills to bring to a marathon or any kind of ski race.

Cool down: Ski easy and reflect on the workout. Did you go too hard or too easy at the beginning, or are there other improvements you would make for the next time you complete this workout? Did you keep a technique goal in mind, and were you able to hold onto it even as the intensity became difficult to hold?

For skiers who are accustomed to interval training and in search of a very hard workout, consider lengthening the time to 20-30 minutes straight of 30-30s, or 2x15 minutes. Make sure that you keep the easy skiing easy and the on time really quick - if your on and off speeds blend together, it will defeat the point of the workout, and may be a sign that it’s time to stop the intervals. 

Another pro tip: many high-end watches these days have interval timers, where you can set the watch to beep every 30 seconds. If you have a watch like this, find out how to set the interval timer because it will really help you execute the workout. If you can’t set a special timer, make sure your watch is outside your jacket and read-able, and just check the wrist time in order to stay on an approximately 30-30 schedule.

Technique Tip: Skiing Light

There are aspects of skiing technique, unrelated to mass, that allow skiers to feel minimal resistance and look light from an outside viewpoint. Certainly there are several technique principles that contribute to this phenomenon, but recently, I have been thinking about the moment my skis first touch the snow.

In striding, V1, V2, and V2 alternate, I emphasize beginning each stroke by gently setting the ball of my foot on the snow and sliding my hip forward at the same time. I encourage you to play around with these cues and pay attention to how your skis are gliding on the snow.

How do these cues improve efficiency? These are my best guesses.

1. To start, gently placing a ski on the snow can reduce the degree that the snow shifts, resulting in greater energy return in the forward direction.

2. Secondly, the friction between the ski and the snow could be less. There are two coefficients of friction: a static one if the materials are stationary and a dynamic one if there is movement. Importantly, the dynamic coefficient is typically less than the static one. Considering this, it make sense that immediately sliding a minimally weighted ski forward and eliminating a stationary moment will make the ski slide more easily.

3. Finally, these cues may also contribute to other biomechanics improvements. 

Your Authors

Caitlin Patterson is a member of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project elite team and the US Ski Team. She is a 9-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!