photo by Steve Penland

Monday, November 5, 2012

Workout Number One

Today was workout number one of the "I want to get serious about skating again" plan.

I was more than a little nervous.  It's pretty easy to be excited about working out hard and getting serious again when you haven't actually worked out in a couple weeks; it's easy to forget how bad things were.  But if I exert a little effort, I can remember that almost all of my September workouts--except, for some reason, the North Shore Inline Marathon--were horrible.  If today's workout was as bad as September's, the whole "get serious again" thing might be out the window in a big fat hurry.

So as I drove to the Dome after work today for an inline workout, I was fervently hoping for a good skate.  I wasn't expecting fast lap times; I'm more realistic than that.  What I wanted--and what I had far too little of this summer--was a workout that felt "normal hard" instead of "weird flat undermedicated hard" or "weird shaky overmedicated out of breath hard."  I don't mind workouts being hard and painful; I just want them to be normal hard and painful.  In fact, in a sick-somewhat-masochistic-athlete way, I miss hard painful workouts.  So I really just wanted a good, hard, normal skate.

And...I got one .

My laps weren't fast, and my heart rate was pretty high, but I felt normal.  I had that happy "wow I'm having so much fun skating, gee this is easy, I want to go faster" delusion that I used to get early in the season.  Unfitness always rears up and bites me in the butt after a few sets of laps, but feeling good and overconfident the first part of the first dome or oval workout of the season is kind of a tradition--a tradition I haven't been able to experience in a while.  And it felt great.

I ended up doing  three sets of two laps hard (ish), one lap easy, two laps hard (each lap is about 600 yards, so the equivalent of 3 laps/1.5 laps/3 laps on the oval).  A relatively short workout--I had originally planned five sets but realized quickly that I was a bit optimistic in that--but enough for someone who hasn't worked out much this past month (except for camp, of course.)  I felt like I managed to do my "new technique" fairly well, which is interesting because last year at this time--when I had only been doing the improved long track technique for a couple months--I wrote in my workout log that I couldn't do the technique in the Dome because of the slippery floor.  I didn't have a problem this time, so either a) I'm better at it; or b) the floor is cleaner this year or c) I'm not doing it right anymore.  It felt like I was doing it right, but we all know I'm notoriously bad at sensing what I'm doing (Derek Parra bent my long track blades for me when I was in Salt Lake--apparently long track blades need to be bent as well as rockered now--and was quite surprised when I reported that I couldn't detect any change).

So.  It was good.  My heart rate was, as I said, pretty high, but I think that was due to lack of fitness.  My usual rubric goes like this: slow with a low heartrate means I'm either overtrained or undermedicated (unless I'm just taking it easy; I can do that with the best of them.  Today, in my warmup laps, I was passed by a woman wearing a dress, jeans, and quad skates.  Yes, all three "kiss of death to speed" factors at once.  So if I'm taking it easy I expect slow/low heartrate.  I just don't want it when I'm trying to skate hard.)  Slow with a high heartrate means I'm either underfit or overmedicated, and since I didn't have the horrible "shaky legs out of breath" feeling that means overmedicated, I think I'm out of shape. ( At least for now I'm not overmedicated; I'm still in the process of adjusting.)

Anyway, out of shape I can deal with.  Needing to lose weight I can deal with--BTDT many times.  Thyroid adjustment is more of a wild card; I haven't nailed it yet this med-adjustment-go-round, but I always have before so I'm optimistic.  I guess the big wild card is the PVC's; if I get them regularly in races I'm likely to get pretty discouraged pretty quickly.  For now, though, today's workout was great.  And the best part is, after one more Dome workout on Wednesday, the oval opens for the ice season on Saturday.  And I'm happy to report that I'm excited about it and ready to work hard.

2 comments:

  1. I may actually be jumping up and down in my chair clapping my hands. She's back!

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  2. Thanks, Sharon! I'm hoping tomorrow (first ice of the season) goes as well as the Dome workout did...

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