Performance anxiety...

Our bodies physiologically respond to stress and anxiety.  I know that you cyclists out there know what I mean - look at the line for the port-o-pot at any race.  Based on my own mom at horse shows when I used to ride, I think most moms do too. 

I was up skiing at Elk yesterday with some other staff trainers from Liberty, and we got to talking about how to train for performance mode.  At least for me, performance mode is different physiologically in skiing than it is in bike racing - my body responds differently.  I have to wonder if this is because I train so differently for my two passions.

Last year at Dev Team Tryouts (skiing), I was in a zone where I couldn't think, could barely form a sentence, and was singing random songs loudly enough that people thought I was tuned into my ipod (I wasn't).  By contrast, at most bike races I'm either visually and mentally focused at the start line (i.e. ignoring you no matter who you are) or I really really have to pee.  Sometimes I'll chat with friends at cross races to make the interminable time between call-ups and the whistle go faster.

In thinking about it, I train for performance often when I'm riding.  I race most weekends.  I train time trials on the road a few times a month.  I ride with mountain biking friends that are faster than me and try to keep up (never mind that usually I am trying this after they've already ridden for a couple of hours).

In skiing (especially at a small, mid-atlantic "mountain"), I train for precision.  A lot.  I do drills, focus on movements on every turn, follow others and mimic their movements - feeling how those movements affect my skis.  In other words, I look pretty most of the time. In skiing unlike in bike racing, I don't often experience exam situations - where the outcome is measured by someone other than me.

So then how can we as ski instructors train for performance? Well, obviously we need to put ourselves in the position to perform more often.  Clinic less, ski more?  Ski under the lifts when I know people are watching?  Race through the bumps, testing balance and agility?  Get the video camera trained on me more often, knowing that people I respect will dissect the movements?  Let it all hang out when the conditions are dicey?

I'm pretty sure this is not the last time I'll think or write about this.  Perhaps this is really just a preview of what I'll eventually write for the DivaSkiTips blog.  Who knows.  If the microscope was working and the database server wasn't in use, I wouldn't be writing at the moment anyway.

Cross-training

I'll admit it, the snow has been too deep for me to venture out even on my singlespeed bike.  I think if I lived right next to my favorite trails, this wouldn't be the case.  But seeing as my car has been parked in the garage at work all week and our truck is still somewhere in a snowbank, the concept of driving to a trailhead is not good.

So instead, I've been "cross-training."  The daily activity is known as hiking to work - complete with snow boots and ski pants.  I could've used the snowshoes yesterday.  While normally it's a mere 20 minute stroll from home to lab, the lack of sidewalks open, drifts, slippery roads and unplowed park where I normally take a short cut means it's bordering on 35 minutes.  Yesterday, we did it in the blizzard.  Only it didn't take as long because I stopped with some friends at the local pub for upper body cross-training.

This afternoon I needed some "interval" core cross-training.  So I shoveled.  Our parking spot out back.  In case there wasn't enough core strength involved in plain old shoveling, a bunch of branches were strewn in the old snow and under the new snow.  Refreshing.  Nothing like aiming shovels of snow at a tree and pine boughs sufficient to look like a large Christmas tree onto a pile in the back yard.  As I was stomping my shoes at the end of the session, I noticed about a 6 foot drift across our basement door.  Yeah, good thing I wasn't planning to drag that singlespeed out today.

Weekend cross-training - yeah, you know it!  Hiking uphill on skis meant for going down, picking up kids, and doing top-to-bottom runs in the worse conditions I can find with ski instructor exam prep candidates.  Oh, and snowshoeing, too.  Yup, we're probably going to need to get out the snowshoes to get the dogs to their happy weekend house.

Leaping to a bit of soreness

It's full on ski season at the moment, so I'm hanging on for dear life.  I have managed to get a few easy trainer spins in lately - by lately I mean about one a week.  I timed yesterday morning's spin to matching last evening's clinic I was teaching at Liberty to some of our exam candidates.

Perfect snow for night skiing - slightly stiffened granular without a hint of ice anywhere.  Yet not slushy enough to suck you down too much.  In anticipation of the temperature dropping, I overdressed.  I would soon regret that.

Among other things, the instructors I was skiing with needed to put a little juice in their legs and a little confidence in their bump skiing.  So... we started with long radius turns with a hop in the middle (known as leapers to you skiers)... then moved onto shortening the radius until we were in full on hops in short radius turns.  And we did _a lot_ of them - mileage, mileage, mileage.  And then, to top it off, we did them in the bumps.

Someone mentioned the last time they did this their core was a bit sore the next day.  My feedback was sooner than that - between all those hopping turns and a morning spin, my shin muscles were sore enough that I could feel it driving home last night.  Pushing the clutch in, speeding past the slowpokes.  (okay, you guys who know me well know that generally I'm the slowpoke - but 40mph in a 55 zone is unacceptable if you're in front of me). 

It's like I'm not 22 anymore.

Annoying habits...

It's been a busy winter so far, and I've spent quite a bit of time driving to far away places to slide on cold snowy stuff.  Thankfully, I've done a lot of this driving solo - but even I'm annoyed at the things I do.

1.  Press the scan button.  Allow radio to scan for up to 20 minutes.  Listen to 2 minutes of a very crappy song to which I can sing some of the words loudly.  Press scan again.  In north central PA and West Virginia, there are a plethora of country music stations and radio ministries.  I don't care for either.

2.  Tell myself I'm not going to eat candy.  Bring grapes to substitute.  Buy candy the first time I stop for gas.

3.  Forget to bring my water bottle out of the trunk after having a dead battery - 2 hours of parched-time.

4. Bring way too much stuff.  A boot/gear bag, a bag for the other uniform, a bag of clothes, a cooler AND my laptop bag.  On the last trip I brought two pairs of skis - like no one in West Virginia would have an extra pair if I broke a binding or something.

5. Leave my cooler in the car, figuring it is cooler out there.  Forgetting that even a cooler won't keep grapes from freezing when it's in the single digits.

6.  Singing loudly without knowing the words to pop music and hip-hop.  Even when it's the third time that hour that the Fireflies song is on.

This week, I'm staying home.  The car has a new starter and a new battery.  It won't even get to go on my next trip - someone else is driving to Elk next week!