The Pro Life

My "office" for the week.Any working stiff who’s ever vacationed with the sole purpose of engaging in physical activity, be it running, cycling, skiing, climbing or whatever, has gained insight into the lifestyle of the professional athlete. For such a lucky bastard, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as getting up each day knowing that all one has to do is eat, train and sleep. Simplistic bliss.

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Race Season Observations

It's interesting to compare the last four race efforts via the heart rate profile for each. I don't think it's lost on any reader that longer events require slower average paces. But it is helpful and instructive to see this visually in the graphs below. Pretty cool.

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30/30 Intervals Revisited

A couple of years ago, Mark Twight from Gym Jones introduced me to the 30/30 interval workout. Go hard for 30 seconds, go easy for 30 seconds. Repeat. Or so I thought. Although I came to really like this workout, it turns out that I really did not understand the concept and performed them incorrectly. It's no wonder that I liked them as much as I did. Going really easy during the rest interval allows for decent recovery and makes you feel pretty damn strong during the work bouts. I don't think performing them in this fashion is a complete waste of time but, as you will see, performing them correctly is a different beast.

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Analysis Paralysis

I'm starting to get a tick thinking about the data generated by my new toy, the Suunto T6 wrist computer. Be careful what you wish for, right? Don't get me wrong, seeing the performance data is crazy interesting to a geek like me but crunching the information and generating some direction afterwards is overwhelming. Fortunately, I have solicited advice from Mark Twight at Gym Jones and Matthew Weatherley-White from Restwise to help make some sense of it all.

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VO2 Max Intervals

Now that I'm in the thick of my preparation for the upcoming US Ski Mountaineering National Championships, I've been giving a lot of thought to the various training intensities I need to visit during the training week. Visitors to this site have read plenty about my opinions regarding this stuff. One aspect of conditioning I have not formally covered is the topic of what most physiologists call VO2 max intervals.

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