photo by Steve Penland

Sunday, December 18, 2011

I'll Take PB's over PVC's Any Day

So here's how today's races went:
No caffeine for 48 hours.
2 races.
PVC's in warmup and at the end of the 1000 meter; none in the 3k.
2 PB's.

I'll take it.

Neither race was great from a technical standpoint.  I blew every corner entry in the 1000, so that plus the PVC's at 800 meters undoubtedly made it a bit slower than it could have been.  Still, my old Personal Best was 1:38; today's race was 1:37.78.  Since the old PB was from January 2008, I was quite happy with today's time. The 3k went better, technically, for the most part--except an "almost fall" at 400 meters.  So I know I could have gone faster in that, too.  Old PB (also from January 2008) was 5:13.24; today was 5:13.18.  Again, happy.

I'm not entirely convinced that the caffeine-free status accounted for the PVC-free status in the 3k (or maybe I just don't want to believe it...I miss my caffeine!  When will this dang headache go away?).  Anyway, I did have some PVC's in warmup and at the end of the 1k, so I wasn't completely free of them.  And I've noticed that, in practice, it seems like I get less of them later in the workout (after I've skated a few hard laps) than at the beginning. We had an unusually short amount of time between the 1k and the 3k today--20 minutes, versus the usual hour or more. Maybe I need to experiment with doing some hard laps relatively shortly before my races (if I can; I have a really hard time skating hard in the warmup lane during races).

Or maybe I just need to suck it up and accept the fact that, at least until my big race January 7 and 8, I'll be caffeine-free.

2 comments:

  1. You rock! So what does PVC mean?

    ReplyDelete
  2. PVC's are Premature Ventricular Contractions, a harmless (they say) type of heart arrhythmia that can really mess up a good race. I've had them for over 20 years, but lately they've been triggered by exercise. Bummer.

    ReplyDelete