Whaddup! If you follow me on Instagram (@gus.schumacher) you may have seen that I traveled to Wisconsin to visit family. Seeing them is very worthwhile to me, even if it means disrupting my training rhythm a little bit. I haven’t gone every summer, because the last few seasons I’ve really tried to keep consistent training. This year, I’ve allowed myself more flexibility in training to accommodate life things like this trip. A definition of flexibility is “a willingness to change or compromise”, which is definitely a theme of my training so far this year. So, this trip was good practice! Here’s how I made the compromise, for anyone with a similar situation:

For full context, this trip was 5 days long, with travel from Alaska to Wisconsin on either end, and some driving in the middle to visit different people. It came on the weekend of the first week in a training block, so pretty much smack dab in the middle. Last year, I would’ve really felt pressure to push training hard through. I also would’ve been anxious about the trip making sessions hard to absorb.

This year, I just trained harder than I would’ve for the first part of the departure week, and planned that I might have to train harder when I returned, or just take a slightly easier week than I had planned. The biggest change that lessened the stress on this trip was accepting that the first 2 weeks of this block might just end up being a little lower training load, and that that would be fine! It’s a long summer and fall, and ultimately I just need to get good work in and not blow myself out.

Leaving the first stop of the trip (Dad’s side)

Going into the trip, I trained hard early week like I said, but the 1-2 days before travel, I eased off the gas a bit, and the day of AND after travel I kept it easy. The days before were both around 3 hours with lower intensity, the day of travel I just went for an easy run and hung out with grandparents. The next day I was off except for a rollerski clinic with MadNorSki in Madison. (BTW big thanks to them and Enjoy Winter for organizing a clinic at a super convenient location and time for me! I had a lot of fun and got some great experience on how to run a clinic like this.)

Then, once I’d had some time to shake off the travel, I had a little window for some key sessions. That next day I did a stressed speed workout (long-ish speeds with little rest) and a long rollerski the day after. Both were with a new buddy named Ryan that is living and training up north in Wisconsin, where I visited Mom’s side. He lent me skis and poles so I didn’t have to travel with them, which was another reason this trip went well training-wise.

Then, the day before travel I took a pretty easy day, and did another clinic on the way to Chicago for our red-eye. This one was with Peak Nordic, and it also went great! I had a lot of fun working with all these peeps. I’m really grateful there’s such a strong nordic community in southern Wisconsin, and that they had me for some clinics.

Adult session. Drills in the parking lot on 4th of July.

Peak Nordic high school group was looking super strong!

Then after all that I traveled home and took another day super easy, and got back into harder training with a threshold session the day after. Made sure the rest off the week wasn’t feeling too sluggish, and made it through to the next week feeling like I barely missed a beat and got some great socializing in!

All of this stuff may seem like an obvious way to do things, but I’ve found it can be easy to get into a rigid mindset concerning training. While that can provide stability, I think it can be detrimental when you inevitably approach life events that are hard to mold to a training schedule. It’s definitely important to commit yourself to training to achieve high goals, but that doesn’t mean you have to totally miss things you want or need to do. Just be flexible, and listen to your body and heart!

The next set of pics are all from the rest of referenced training block, which just concluded yesterday. Found that rhythm again very quickly!

In the mountains a lot with Rudy, my brother!

Wolverine peak with Rudy and Lucy on a day somewhere in the middle

Hit some dingers with Rudy on the other sunny day

And a crazy new spot that Tracen showed me

It’s a few more weeks until my next travel, a trip to Norway and Sweden for U.S. Ski Team camp! I din’t go last year because I didn’t want to disrupt the training rhythm, but this year I’m working it in to get more time with the team, and take advantage on some on snow time in the ski tunnel in Torsby, Sweden, as well as some high-level rollerski racing in Trollhattan, Sweden. That’ll be cool!