Happy Monday!

Woot woot! We’re excited to work with you this season to get you ready for an awesome upcoming winter. Thanks to all of you for filling out the form about your goals, injury tendencies, and what you want to get out of this. It’s really helpful from our standpoint to be able to make this tailored to the group. As you might imagine, there are common injuries and common goals for the season and our goal is to have you leave stronger and with a better understanding of your body, training, and how work as an athlete. If at any point you have questions, plop them into Slack, as inevitably other people have the same question.

As we get going, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page with a few things. Grab a cup of coffee…

-I’ll be shifting the homepage for the member site to be the blog. I’ll post all updates there, as well as links to the weekly emails, Zoom recordings the day after our calls (more on Zooms at the end), videos, and anything else. I’ll try to post updates on Slack as well, but just know that those are your two places to look if you have a question or aren’t seeing something.

-If you’ve looked at your plan and it seems wildly off in terms of volume or difficulty, please let me know. It’s always a little tricky to apply plans. If you still don’t have a plan, please ensure that you created a TP account and filled out the form. In terms of modifying the plan you have, we don’t have the ability to make individual changes to your plans, but with the premium TP account included in the program, you can move things around by dragging and dropping workouts in the desktop app. To shift workouts in the mobile app, edit the workout and change the date.

-SHOES. Shoes are very important for training. I’m a massage therapist as well as a coach (Alison, here), and i see so many people on my table injured with various ailments. I scratch my head trying to figure out what’s going on, and then I’ll ask how old their shoes are. "Oh, they’re only six months old.” NO! If you’re training regularly, shoes wear out very quickly. Running shoes are designed to last about 300 miles, and if you estimate (on the low end) that an hour is equivelant to five miles, that means 60 hours. Some simple math indicates how frequently they need to be replaced. Sure, you can eek out a little more, but if you feel any niggles in your body, think about the last time you changed shoes. If you can’t remember, go to your local shop and try on a new pair. Likely you’ll instantly realize your others are dead. Running is a simple sport in terms of equipment, but your body will take the toll if you don’t maintain a steady supply of freshies. It may feel excessive, but it’s cheaper than PT appointments, or skis (though maybe not as fun…). You can track your shoes in TrainingPeaks in your settings, under Equipment, or on Strava if you use that. If you want to read more about the structure of a shoe, I wrote an article here.

-You’ll see on your plan that most of the aerobic workouts are listed as runs. If you are not a runner and don’t want to be, you can substitute biking, hiking (either outside or on a treadmill), or roller skiing for the running workouts. You’ll want to increase the volume a little bit if you do that. An hour run is more like a 75-90 min. non-impact workout. We’ll probably mention it again later as we get into more intensity workouts, but the more specific you can be for those, the better. So an uphill hike with poles will be better for intervals than a bike ride, simply because the biomechanics are more similar. We’ll be sharing some videos on ski walking technique as well as roller skiing, so stay tuned for those. If you’re not a runner but would like to be, start adding in 2-3 min. intervals of running with equal walking, after a 10 min. walking warm up. I love turning non-runners into runners and would be happy to help you if you want to give it a go.

-Strength. If you don’t have access to a gym, let your creativity run wild with objects in your house. A big bag of dog food can serve as a kettle bell for deadlifts, a kid can serve as a wiggly backpack for squats or weight for a plank, and jugs of milk can be dumbbells. If you’re unsure how to modify an exercise for what you have available, see if anyone on Slack has a good idea. I love hearing what athletes come up with. That said, 10-15lb dumbbells, a couple of kettlebells (25lb and 35 or 45lb), and a weight vest are all highly versatile for a home gym without spending too much money or taking up too much space.

- Similarly, if you don’t have access to hills, you’ll become good friends with stairs or a box for box step ups.

-Zoom calls will be every other Monday mornings at 8am, starting next Monday the 10th. Our ski prep program has monthly zooms, but we also have monthly topical Zooms starting for all our athletes, so you’re welcome to come to those during the course of the program. We’ll post the topics the week prior to the call. I’ll also post the Zoom link in Slack and the blog.

Finally, I wanted to share this video from Ben Cathro, who hosts a Learn to Bike series on Pinkbike. Whether you’re new to training or not, it’s a good reminder of how to learn new things, and plants a seed about goals. We don’t have the production capabilities that Pinkbike does, but we do have many videos that we will be sharing to hopefully help you learn new training techniques and skills.

Phew! You made it. We’re super excited that you’re here, and looking forward to getting to know you. It’s awesome to see so many people with great goals for the season. If you don’t have a specific goal, don’t worry. As you become more fit, I bet you’ll come up with something. :)

-Alison and Sam