De-Data De-Cember

I think I'm going to De-Data December.

In other words, I'm going to stop focusing on workout lap times.  Go by feel, not by time.  Leave the stopwatch in the skate bag.

Skate naked.  (well, sort of).

I had an interesting conversation/advice session with Hawkeye Boy today between the time trials.  Hawkeye Boy is an extremely talented skater, and about my age.  I've skated a few workouts with (actually, behind) him, and he's one of the two skaters who were kind enough to allow me to tag along with them for the team pursuit at the end of Pack Nationals last winter.  Hawkeye Boy has been skating forever, is very nice, and I think he finally decided, after my whine-fest after my lackluster 500 this morning, that perhaps a bit of advice was in order.  Also, he and I were (inexplicably) paired for the upcoming 1500, and he probably knew I'd be even more depressed after that since it was distinctly possible he'd lap me in the race.

Anyway, Hawkeye Boy suggested that I was perhaps over-focused on data, and that I might try abandoning the stopwatch for a while and just focusing on how I felt during workouts--and on having fun.  He himself, he said, almost never timed his workout laps--and he is, as I said, an extremely successful skater.

Of course, I immediately had a lot of "yeah, buts" cruise through my head.  Yeah, but I need to know if I'm getting slower or not.  I need to know my lap times to help me figure out if my thyroid medication is properly tuned.  I'm an obsessive compulsive anal retentive control freak and I love my lap time data.

But after a few moments of pondering my "yeah buts," I realized that Hawkeye Boy had a point.  Lap time data has not been good to me lately.  Rather than using it as information to be evaluated and used to help adjust upcoming workouts, as I used to, I've become more focused on "are my times good or bad?" and then letting that information dictate how I felt about the workout.  Lap time data has also been coaxing me away from doing my workouts as they should be done; in  fact, Thursday night I ended up doing my "80%" intervals at 100% just because I wanted to see the faster lap times.  Not good.

So I think I might try Hawkeye Boy's advice, at least for a month.  I'm also going to try to skate with my friends more.  I've been having a frequent dilemma of whether to skate my planned workout or ditch my plans and skate with friends.  My workouts tend to be opposite of theirs--I do fast stuff when they're doing endurance, and vice versa--so it's been hard to skate with people.  So maybe I'll skate with others when they're there, and do my regular workouts if I'm solo.  It should be fun, and good for my technique, and I'll be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy by seeing how my races turn out by the end of the month.

After I De-Data December.