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Recovery week or preparation week?

November 3, 2022
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Hello again, Finn O’Connell here checking in for another BSF Pro Team blog update. In the last blog I was in Park City, Utah with the US Ski Team for our fall training camp! As I mentioned in the blog, we focused on some high but productive training hours and did some L3 (threshold) intensity. Since then, we have returned to Montana where our training mindset has shifted as we are nearing the season!

Headshot photo from media day in PC

The first week back was generally a recovery week. And when I say recovery week, it was more a week to get rested for the coming weeks of hard L4 and time trial focused workouts. So I call this a preparation week. To get what we want out of these workouts we need to be healthy and rested to be able to push ourselves as hard as we can. And doing these workouts either slightly sick or tired can really break down the immune system and make us really sick!

I spent the week following Park City, house sitting in Big Sky! This was great for me because I was able to explore some new roads and trails but mainly just relax in a beautiful home with spectacular views! I was able to sleep in until my “natural alarm” woke me up, and have leisurely days!

Junebug and I hanging out in Big Sky!

I did get some workouts in that have been on my bucket list, including summiting Wilson Peak in the Spanish Peak mountain range! It was a perfect day!

As you can see below on my sleeping heart rate data, throughout the week, my average heart rate and minimum heart rate while sleeping decreased 10 beats. This meant I was recovered! I do track my heart rate every night, but I try to go by how I feel vs what my heart rate was. However, if I wake up feeling a little off, I will look at my numbers to see if my hr was elevated, and it is a pretty good indicator that I am on the verge of being sick, or simply not recovered. I normally will take the morning off or easy and I should be good to go by the next day.

The day after camp (AVG: 55 Min:49)
After a week of recovery/easy training (AVG: 45, Min: 42)

When I am training such high volume loads, like in September, when I trained 102 hours, and even had a 30 hour week, I am riding a very fine line of being overtrained to the point where sickness is eminent. I have to be smart and aware each day to not step over the line. And after 4 years of training 600+ hours, I know my body quite well.

So anyway, after this recovery/ preparation week, I knew I was recovered and ready to throw down in our two time trials and two L4 workouts the following 10 days. These would include classic L4 intervals, followed by a skate sprint time trial, then a classic 15 mass start, and finally 6x4 min bounding. Read the next blog to see how these went, and why we are changing our training to so much hard intensity!