Autumn training for skiers: three sessions from Vermont

Ben Ogden trains in Vermont, in the north-east of the United States. We asked him to share his autumn favourites, and got three very different answers back.

They say as much about how a long build-up is kept going as they do about which intervals he runs.

Ski walking and bounding: 8 x 8 minutes at zone 3

• "This is a go-to workout for me all summer, but I find myself gravitating towards it especially often in the fall. I find a nice mountain and do 8x8min zone 3 intervals," says Ben Ogden.
• Zone 3 sits below the properly hard stuff. You work steadily for a long time without ever coming close to having to stop. It is where a lot of the base work gets done in autumn.
• On the flatter sections he runs, or bounds with poles. On the steepest he ski walks, a fast walk where the pole plant does much of the work. The recovery is walking back down.
• "It is a really simple workout and requires very little in terms of terrain. You can get into zone three with almost any hill. The hard part is usually not going too hard," says Ogden, who skis on Swix poles.
• That last sentence is worth reading twice. With eight reps of eight minutes, the rep is not the challenge. Holding back long enough that rep eight looks like rep one is.
• "This is one of my favorites because of its simplicity. Also because it is best executed in very quiet, beautiful places. There is no better place to be in the fall in Vermont than in the woods, and this workout is always done deep in the woods," he says.

The session is also hard in a particular way.

• "I find that this workout is hard from a heart and lungs standpoint without being too hard on the muscles," says Ogden. That makes it a session he can put at the end of a hard week, when his legs are already sore from a weight session earlier on.

In short: One hill, eight reps, and the recovery is the way down. The terrain asks almost nothing of you.

Classic rollerski speeds

• "In the fall I find that rollerskiing starts to feel very easy. I think it is a side effect of doing so much of it," says Ogden.

Then he adds something few athletes say out loud:

• "Now I think about it, rollerskiing starting to feel so easy is maybe not ideal from a training standpoint, but is the reality."

The session itself is 15 to 20 short speeds of 20 to 30 seconds, spread across a two-hour ski. Sometimes he takes them in groups of five or six with a longer break in between, sometimes he sprinkles them through the whole session.

• "The speeds always feel hard but kind of in a 'wow I'm so strong and feeling so good' type of way. This is just a great feeling for the confidence going into the ski season," says Ogden.
• "By design this workout never gets hard enough to make you want to stop or have to dig deep. You just do little accelerations right up until the point where you start to be out of breath or your muscles fatigue, and then you take a break.
  "This is a session designed to cost you nothing. It is there to build confidence, not fatigue.
  

In short: End the speed before it starts to hurt. The point is the feeling, not the numbers.

Group mountain bike ride

• "The Vermont woods are so spectacular in the fall and mountain biking is a great way to get immersed in them," says Ogden.

Then comes the most honest sentence in his whole answer.

• "The fall can be a time where motivation to get in the second workout or get those weekly hours up can be challenging. The trusty group mountain bike ride is a perfect way to get out there and have the workout fly by, even when you're struggling to remember why you do all this training because it's been 7 months since you last did a cross country ski race."
• "Goal of the session is just to get out and enjoy an easy workout without thinking too much about training or ski racing or anything else. I always like to try and get a conversation going about someone else's life or work or whatever."
• "As an athlete so much time is spent thinking about yourself and your own goals. It's really nice to enjoy some sessions here and there where you just go through the motions and think about something totally different."

In short: The second session of the day gets done when somebody is waiting for you.

What the three sessions say about an autumn

Look at what Ben Ogden actually talks about. One session is about intensity. One is about feel. One is about being able to face it.

The last one is the easiest to cut from a training plan, and the one that most often decides whether the rest of the plan gets done at all.

Try Ben's three sessions

1. Ski walking and bounding. 8 x 8 minutes at zone 3 on a long hill. Run or bound on the flatter sections, ski walk on the steepest. Walk back down as recovery.

2. Classic speeds. 15 to 20 speeds of 20 to 30 seconds across a two-hour rollerski. Either in groups of five or six, or sprinkled through.

3. Group mountain bike ride. Easy, unstructured, with people you can talk to. Preferably about something other than training.

Your last race was a long time ago, and the next one is still some way off. Autumn is decided in that gap, and it is decided by whether you get out of the door, not by what the plan says.

Enjoy the training.

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