Tonight's Practice

Jesse was running the speed group while everyone else is away at PanAms. I enjoyed tonights program.

My technique still sucks. Not sure what I can do about it. Trying my best to follow the people with better technique, like Kevin and Mauricio.

The warm-up was 1 minute on and 1 minute off. I kept in there when it came time to sprint, but I probably worked too hard given the fact that it was only a warm-up. Again, technique goes out the window when you are fighting to stay in. I tried my best to stay relaxed and follow the person in front. By the end I was taking a complete no skating rest during the one minute ons and jumping back on for the one minute offs.

I thought I had already burned myself out too early, but it turned out we had plenty of rest intervals for the full out sprints in our first drill. It was 30 seconds off and 10 seconds on full sprint 3 times, with a 2 minute rest while the faster group did theirs, and then back on. Repeat 8 times. (did that make sense?). I spent most of my time trying to close that gap between Kevin and Mauricio (sp?). I only started to get the idea of "fast legs" starting off, and not so low to begin with when we were closer to the end.

The last drill was 500 meter sprints, three times. Since I don't think I have ever really timed my 500 meters, it was a good indication of what we can do on a 200 meter track. It appears my non drafting time for the 500 meter distance is about 58 seconds. Drafting behind Scott, Travis and Kevin in the final one, I came in at 54 seconds. Now I guess I have to work on beating those times.

In the cooldown I really tried to focus a bit on technique. Getting my food over, and thinking about the undercarve. Getting both edges on the straights.

All in all, I felt very positive about practice tonight.