16 July 2023

This week’s running (or lack thereof) is brought to you by Mt Hotham, Victoria. Chalking the few days of skiing down to cross-training. Given how much pressure my poor skiing technique puts on my quads and ITBs, I can’t see how it’s not doing some incremental good! And our accommodation was up a sneaky hill - climbing that countless times, in the snow, at “high” altitude (~1800m) surely all accounts for something?? Yes? No. Probably not. We’ll see come September.

The main goal for this week’s skiing was to not blow out a knee. Second to that was no upper body injuries (collarbones, arms, wrists etc) - the eternal optimist in me figures there’s still a possibility of running with those types of injuries (at least sooner than with a blown ACL) but I suspect anyone with a hint of medical training will be quick to tell me otherwise. Luckily this wasn’t something I needed to find out having successfully avoided any injury; although have to say there were a few moments where that was a questionable aspiration. I’m not a good skier, and Mt Hotham is really only for good skiers, meaning I spent a lot of the time on terrain that’s above my level. Once I got my chops back, had a great time, but definitely a few curly moments (and plenty of time on my bum!).

I did manage to get one little 8ker knocked out while up there. Quickly learned that my trail running shoes are not appropriate for ice or snow, and so just stuck to the road, running out and back along the Great Alpine Road. Nice little bit of altitude training. Or something like that.

I've still been recovering from my cold this week, so skipped the sunday biggy as well (we were back home by then). So all in all, a solid week of training, right before I should be peaking, getting in 8 kms in total. I could be in trouble here folks. About 6 weeks to go till the big dance. Let's see if we can turn this ship around! (Or see whether skiing truly is the great cross trainer I hoped it is).

The runs I didn't do this week include: an hour long progression run (incrementally stepping up speed over the run, to finish on a near-sprint), a similar hill sprints session (6 X 1 min) and a four hour longy.

It hasn't been an entirely unproductive this week, at least! I've booked my travel to the race. Will be flying into London and spending a few days there, and have now sorted out a flight to Geneva the day before race day, and a shuttle transfer down to Chamonix where the race village is. Unbeknownst to me, Chamonix is apparently a relatively well known and popular ski area, so I've looked like a right idiot when explaining to people where this race is and bumbling through a description for what and where Chamonix is. News to me.

Thanks for reading my skiing blog.