I'm registered: I've officially signed up for the 2004 National Masters Championships in Ishpeming/Marquette. And I signed up just before the entry fee went up. And I received a discount, courtesy of belonging to the AXCS. And thanks to Team NordicSkiRacer.com teammate Bill Kaltz, I already have housing arranged for the championships. Now the big question is, how will I do?

I felt better during November than I did in October, and even got in a couple of 8-hour+ training weeks. Intervals are going well. December rolled around and my travel picked up - I've been doing lots of running on treadmills. What I miss is running outside over hilly terrain and doing ski-specific foot work.

Since I've been putting in more hours, I've also started back to the weight room, making sure not to over do it.

December's Plan

December's training plan started with several assumptions: 

• There'd be no snow in southeastern Michigan, or at least not enough to ski on.
• I'd be traveling two full weeks for work, and would not be able to drive north to get in an early ski (I didn't want my wife to divorce me...)
• The Crystal Mountain Pre-Season Race was out - see the bullet above.
• My first race would be the Holly Cup between Christmas and New Years.
• I needed some race-type training during the month.
• I wanted at least one long, slow (Zone 1) distance session.

Torbjorn suggested that a couple training sessions in December be pace/race sessions, and one of them fairly long if I was doing any long races. My December first "race" session was the final 5km run / 5km rollerski Duathlon in the 1st Annual NordicSkiRacer.com Fall Race Series. The second one was an informal 9 mile rollerski "race" with Doug Heady and Dave Fanslow at Kensington Metropark. There's nothing like a little friendly competition to get you to push hard!

For one of my distance sessions, I did a nice Zone 1 two-hour run on the mountain bike trails at the Novi Tree farm. We received a little snow - not enough to ski on, too much to rollerski. The snow-covered trails provided a nice cushion under foot, and an earlier mountain biker had laid down a set of tracks for me to follow so I didn't get lost. Makes me very glad I run. Of course, my legs were pretty trashed the next day since I hadn't run over an hour in months.

If snow did come, I planned on modifying the plan: For the first few days on snow, I'd do some easy distance skiing to get used to be on snow again, and to let the muscles adapt. Think about it: all summer and fall I've been rollerskiing on smooth, even pavement with great traction. On snow, the terrain is much more variable and the traction disappears. A premium is placed on balance.

As December came in, everyone in Indiana, Ohio, Ontario, Michigan's UP and northern lower Michigan got snow. We Detroit area folks got none. It was very frustrating looking at all the trail reports from skiers who were enjoying there first ski of the year.

As it happened, we finally got an inch of quality snow. I skied two days last weekend, before the snow melted - skated the first day, diagonal strided the second. And the striding definitely made me feel where my thighs join my torso...

Happy Holidays All!