the prologue

Day 1 of the US Champs is underway. The racing is done, but that's only one small part of the day! After a lot of travel and waiting for the races, it was good to finally start racing today. For this weekend, I am training through the races so that I'll be a bit more primed for next weekend and ultimately the Worlds in 6 weeks. You can't rest for every weekend race, but doing a lot of travel at this important time of year makes it even more tricky to have optimal preparation. Ideally, it would be all about quality training and being rested, but 4500km of driving puts a small spanner in the works. The last few days have been a balance of rest and increasing the training load bit by bit to wake up the legs.

I was getting the question - what does a race day on the road look like? It's always surprising how quickly the days slip by! Although the race is only a small part of the day, the rest of the day's recovery and training revolves around the race. Today was a 10:45am start.

630am. Wakeup.

645am. Easy morning jog, silly walks and light dynamic stretching and some pre-race mental exercises. The purpose is just to get the body going, metabolism running and the brain running!

745am. Breakfast (3h before start). Oatmeal, fruit and good strong coffee works for me!

815am. Shower (if it's hot, a cold shower, if I'm tight, a hot shower does wonders to loosen up), change, pack bags.

845am. Off to the race.

930am. Pick up race package, bibs, etc.

945am. Change into race kit, warmup, dynamic stretching, strides, pre-race mental exerices.

1045am. Race. Today was a 35-minute sand dune slog!

1130am. Cooldown, recovery drink, some stretching.

1215pm. Head back to the cassa.

1pm. Shower, lunch.

2pm. Compression tights on for a bit of chill time, reading, listening to some tunes or a nap. Resting hard is just as important as training hard!

3pm. Up and ready for the pre-dinner reco workout.

330pm. Easy bike, water run, jog depending on how long the morning race was!

530pm. Ice bath, swim in the lake, massage. Depends on where we are and what we can find!

6pm. Dinner!

7pm. Some post-race analysis from the day. What went well? Some pre-race prep for tomorrow -reviewing goals, looking at old maps for tomorrow or for Norway!

8pm. Some relaxing time, hanging out with the team, checking email, watching the US get beat by Ghana. Ouch.

900pm. Getting ready for bed and ideally fast asleep by 10pm.

That's it! It's a full day. More and more, I find the mental focus especially important but also more tiring on the big, important days. Increasingly, it's super important to make time for recovery and relaxing. Every sport psychology book in the world talks about it, but it's something you have to figure out for yourself too!

And for something completely different...With ARK all wrapped up for the summer, it's cool to see some kids still having fun while they get stronger for the fall - the CXC Team blog talking about the St. Croix Valley Ski club. Good blog.