Thursday, August 16, 2012

Transition to skier

After a brief training "break" after WOC, where I managed to keep myself from doing any intensity for about two weeks, my focus has shifted to skiing.  This is made easier in part thanks to my achilles tendon, which has proclaimed itself to be fully in tendinitis mode, thus making running pretty painful.  So, it's back to rollerskiing and *gasp* BIKING!  I haven't ridden my bikes this much in a looooong time.  It took nearly a weekend to assess all the things that were not working with my various bicycles, but now two of three bikes are in good working order, the third just needs a new chain, and I've discovered that I thankfully haven't lost ALL my skills on the trails.  That makes things more enjoyable!  I am rediscovering the joy of training while being an injured skier.  Seems I never really had a full injury-free season... I'm hoping to kick this tendinitis stuff soon, and not pick up any other nagging overuse injuries!  woo.

The achilles thing is annoying.  Like all overuse injuries, you never really know which session is going to push you over the edge.  For me, I think it was an unfortunate sprint through the Amsterdam airport on my way to WOC; my calf never calmed down after that, and I wasn't doing myself any favors racing hard with tight calves and a nagging ache in my achilles.  I'm doing my best to rest the damn calf, keep things iced and kinesio-taped and massaged, and yesterday I actually managed to make it through a running intensity workout with no pain.  Hopefully this is a sign of better times to come.  I do feel terribly out of skiing shape, but the base is there, so I'm trying not to freak out.

In exciting news, I'm going to be part of Team Madshus this year!  Peter Hale and I started the conversation last winter, and I think Madshus will be a great company to be a part of.  Peter totally gets ski-o, and as well as some top-o'-the-line race skis, I'm also picking up a bunch of last year's demo skis to trash in ski-o races this winter.  Wahoo!  



Now back to the thesis...

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