Super Tour Finals Recap:
Well, it is absolutely crazy to say that my 23-24 season is officially over. As far as a recap from Duluth Super Tour Finals goes, we’ll keep it short and sweet. Every race was a challenge and the level needed to perform well was simply not there. We started off with a classic race that was mostly double poling, and was the first classic race I’d done in about 2 months which was simply a factor of the race calendar. As a result, I was super sore the following days making it hard to perform. The highlight of the trip was racing in the “team sprint" , a format I’ve never raced before, but was a tremendous amount of fun. APU’s sprint teams did a fantastic job taking many podium spots! Needless to say, by day’s end, I was hoarse from all the loud cheering. The last race was a 36k skate race. It was 25 degrees, snowing and the wind was blowing at about 30 mph for the entirety of the race making it the slowest race conditions of the year. Unfortunately, my body was so stiff, and it was simply a fight to get through the race. A rough race, to cap off a tough week, to top off a tough season…
Season Recap:
As I said, the season was incredibly hard. After starting the season off sick, I thought things would turn around eventually, but they never really did. Sure, I had a few good results, but for me having a race that I’m happy with takes so much more into consideration than just a result. What’s really important to me is being able to have my body perform how I want it to; ie… the ability to perform as close to your highest, absolute performance level on any given day. Unfortunately I only felt like I was close to meeting that mark in one race this season. Besides that, for whatever reason, things just felt like they did not click. I had a constant fight between my mind and my body. It was very draining not understanding why my body could not perform the same output as my mind demanded and thought was reasonable. Likewise, the rhythm of the race calendar was tough to build momentum. This season's 12 races took more out of me than the 27 I did last season. I’m still scratching my head as to why there seemed to be such a mismatch between how well my training went this year and how poorly my racing went. For now, I’m looking forward to just floating along the current instead of constantly fighting it.
Here’s a major takeaway for me to share. I would caution anyone against racing when they’re sick. Personally, I will never race when I’m sick again unless there is something incredible on the line. Here’s why. During training you build and increase your tolerance to a given stimulus. You try to extend your body's “central governor” and improve other physiological factors. Then during races, you have a good idea of what goes into obtaining the race you want to have. This includes what effort level it will feel like, the speed you’re going, the heart rate, breathing rate, power output, etc… and all of these things are relative to one another. After I was sick for the first races of the season, there was a strange feeling that things were not aligned. A given pace or speed felt harder than usual, and speeds that I thought were reasonable ended up being too much. During the training year, I got used to investing in an input factor of “X” and getting an output return of “Y”. However, during the race season, this same formula failed. My mind was ready to give 100% while my body only returned 50%. My theory is that when I raced when I was sick, I reset my body's hardwear because I pushed it too hard when it was not ready to be pushed and now as a response it shuts me down before I get close to that point. So in the future, I’ll sit out the race and give my body the necessary time to recover. This will give me the best odds of coming out the other side in a good place. If I race while sick however, I risk the unknown repercussions that could last who knows how long.
I know there is no way of knowing, but if sitting out those races would’ve meant that the rest of my season would’ve gone how I’d hoped, I would’ve much rather sit out those races than have the season I just did. A short term sacrifice for a long term gain.
On the positive side for this season, there were a number of highlights I’ll leave you with.
I found a new sprint gear in skating which I had not seen before.
I had the best ever skate sprint result on a Super Tour.
I had the best ever classic sprint qualifier at a Super Tour/ US Nationals.
I found a personal mental limit that I’ve not experienced before.
For now, I am going to unplug and reset. I’ll be back better and stronger than ever, but there are some things to do before then.
Until next time, Happy Spring!
Garrett
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