For new readers

To get an idea of what I'm trying to do and why I think it's possible, check out the following entries, they'll help get you up to speed.

Monday, May 6, 2013

minimum maintenance roads

END-SPAR minimum maint. road
My journey down this road started a few weeks ago in mid April when I helped take our youth climbing team down to Minneapolis for their first 'away game'. It was awesome, but the long travel days meant that i missed both my friday and sunday workouts.  The following week i was in the throes of last minute planning for END-SPAR and had to make Sunday after the race a family day as they'd been rather neglected as of late.  And finally, training this last week was hampered by a 'too good to miss' trip to Pembina (little south pembina river during flood stage!) in addition to race director duties for the family adventure race.

So long story short, three weeks in a row with only my 3 10 minute workouts done.  Surprisingly, i'm feeling good about it.  probably partly because i was getting outside to hang checkpoints rather than sitting in front of a computer. And although i was super busy and each of my 10 minute sessions felt squeezed in and almost an after thought, i still managed to match or better my best ever efforts on every one of them.  Sweet.

Maybe if i modify my schedule to be somewhat periodized - limiting it to the 3 sessions (for a total of 30 min) for three weeks with a 90 minute super 'effort' at the end i'd have a three week cycle where i was getting in some long enough efforts with enough frequency to cause some adaptation of the connective tissues, etc - which is one of the major limitations (as far as my research has shown) of using an exclusively high intensity approach to endurance.

ND whitewater

If nothing else, the last three weeks have shown me that, for what it's worth, even just the 3 weekly workouts are enough to keep my stimulated and feeling pretty damn fit - in a minimum maintenance kind of way.

1 comment:

  1. I uploaded the full-quality version of this clip to YouTube if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Pz074kigU&feature=youtu.be

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