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1) Be sure to eat and sleep well. It is critical to successful performance that you take care of your body. After all it's the only one you have and your race performance will depend on how you treat it. Make sure you get plenty of sleep over the next month. That means a minimum of 8 hours a night. Proper sleep will assure your body of the recovery time it needs to rebuild from your training and the rest it needs to perform at the highest level. It will also help prevent you from getting the various colds and flus that go around this time of year. It would be a shame to get sick just before these important races because your body is tired and run down. Be smart!!! Eating well is crucial to your success. That means eating enough to replenish the calories you expend each day in practice, but not eating so much as to add extra weight to tug up the hills. In simple words, eat well balanced, sensible meals. Be sure to drink lots of water and take your vitamins if you do so normally. I also take ecchanasia to help ward off colds and flus. Again, be smart!!! 2) Train hard, but train smart over these next weeks. That means following your coach's instructions on when to train at level III and when to train at level I. It is very important over the next weeks to use our strong base training as a foundation for speed development. We will be doing less endurance training and more speed and interval training. Make sure to put 100% effort into our speed workouts if you want to do well. Equally as important as giving 100%, is making sure not to overtrain on our easy days. Our practices are scheduled to provide your bodies with a chance to recover from hard practices, so make sure and let that happen. Overtraining can be as harmful for your racing as undertraining. 3) If your results haven't been as good as you know they should be, now is the time to talk to me about what you can do over the next couple weeks to improve. It's not to late to rescue a less than great season for you personally. You have to make the decision to do so and talk to me about it. 4) Take care of your equipment. Skis get faster the more they are waxed. Wax your skis every chance you get. The more you do, the faster they will be. That is why you will often see world cup racers sking on skis that look old. It's not because they don't have new ones, it's because old ones can be faster. 5) HAVE FUN!!!!! It's no coincidence that the best athletes are generally the ones that enjoy their sports the most. Enjoy your training, your racing, your team mates, and help make sure everyone else is having fun also. We have a great group of skiers at East High with outstanding talent. We have had great races so far this year and I think our best races are yet to come. Let's have fun, and "do it".
Coach Harry |