My Winter Training, Part 1.

I finally go my training back on track after fighting the flu for the whole month of November and trying to learn how to ride a bike again. Christmas of course was bit of a distraction with all the gatherings, eating and drinking and enjoying our little lady's first Christmas...I'm sure mom and dad were more excited than she was, but all that wrapping paper and ribbon seemed to be the greatest thing ever. Work is trying to screw up my training between Christmas and New Year because somehow I was the only manager/supervisor left to take care of the business...funny how that works...This occurred to me on Boxing Day or Tapaninpäivä so good thing was that I didn't have time to stress about this. Two words though...communication and the other words starting with RE and ending with CT.

But anywho. We got snow so that's great, I can take my skis out. Also the temperature is somewhat mild considering it's end of December. I went out skiing on Sunday and while the trails were pretty rough, it was better than some years before. The local ski trail guys are just bit spoiled with snow in earlier winters and don't really seem to have equipment to get the trails going when there's less snow. I did ski for 2 hours and 24km which was OK for the first time especially in those conditions. I was pretty spent after that though, but it's always the same when hopping on skis.

I took Monday off and just commuted to work in crispy -20 temperature. Same thing on Tuesday with fairly strong wind. My legs felt pretty good riding home from work so I decided to try 3 x 20' again after suffering like a dog the other day. This time it wasn't that bad and I was able to do 3 x 20' at 303W, 309W and 309W average without killing myself. I think I'll keep doing this from now on once or twice a week and hopefully he increase in volume will bump my power up another notch. I've seen 10% gains a year in my 20min power over past 2 years and another year like that would be great. I think it means that I need to push myself quite a bit harder than before. Below is the graph of my Tuesday trainer session in the dungeon.

I'll take my skis out again today and see how my legs work. Trying to do another 2h to find my ski power. First 100km is always a struggle and after 200km the skis start to move much better. 500km and you can actually ski. Too bad we had such a poor December with snow. Hopefully we'll get more snow and the weather stays mildish so this wouldn't be another crappy skiing winter.