First Vakava practice… WOW

So I’ve done a little double polling lately as cross training (doesn’t use the hip muscles much). I’m not great at it, which is why it’s good to show up at practice with coaching help once a week. Tonight was my first Vakava practice — I hadn’t gone yet this summer because my hip couldn’t have handled it.

I generally expect to get my butt kicked at Vakava practice. But tonight’s practice totally killed me. TOTALLY. I reached that “my arms/abs can’t work anymore” point at about 50 minutes. Too bad practice was nearly 1 hour 50 minutes long. Honestly, I’m trying to work on my technique (my double pole needs a lot of work), but my body can’t even handle moving the “wrong” way. At 1:15, I’m pretty sure I had some sort of wide-eyed “survival” look on my face. Ha!

My HR was comically high tonight as well. As I’ve said, my HR for threshold type effort is around 180, maybe around 185. 1 hr 30 into the workout, my average was 183. !!! Seriously, think about this: we do stop for technique instruction, to talk about the next set of repeats, etc. And I was AVERAGING 183. On one of the times that we were just skiing “with good form” up a gradual hill I looked down at my watch: 199 ?!?! Seriously. It’s one thing to be working this hard and be near the front. But I’m honestly the last person… by a LOT. What’s wrong with this picture? 🙂

So when we were finally going to “cool down” back to the vehicles, I honestly just gave up. I couldn’t move. I made sure I was far enough behind not to be seen & skated up the hills, using as little upper body strength as I could. 🙂 Dave’s going to read this and scold me, but I honestly had nothing left. 🙂 Total average for the 1:50 workout: 180.

So, good to get a good butt kicking! Motivates me to work on my strength even more & doing more specific strength stuff on skis.