Alex Lee on a weight training—muscle endurance family outing.
Life happens—meaning busyness. Dialing in a practical training plan for the PDG and juggling life’s odd and ends…it can be done.
I’d like to think that in my chest beats the heart of a warrior, but if I am being honest with myself, I’ll have to settle for the heart of a weekend warrior. I am a part-time fanatic. And yet, I am a sucker for Lycra, skinny skis, and tight hip-flexors; I am a glutton for going too far too fast; I am always hungry to ski bad snow in the dark, eat too much big vert, and complain about cold toes; I am, much to my own chagrin, a skimo racer.
How then, am I to reconcile such unreasonableness with my aging knees and day job? Can maximum effort and dad strength bridge a growing gap of falling out of shape? Can I juggle both an insatiable hunger for more with an inner nature that holds the lazy marmot as my spirit animal? Can I have fun and train for race day? While success is far from guaranteed, I am on the road to answer these questions: here is my story.
I moved to Colorado in 2010. I was invincible, as all boys in their 20s are. When a friend asked if I would do the Grand Traverse with him, I said sure without having any real sense of what I’d signed up for. K2 Coombacks and a 4-buckle boot worked great skiing couloirs in Rocky Mountain National Park, so I figured they’d surely be fine… I left Crested Butte a ski mountaineer, 40 miles later I skied into Aspen a rando racer. Man did it hurt, but I was hooked. Skis got smaller, boots got lighter, eventually I found myself in spandex.
I moved to Alaska seven years ago. Little skis were nowhere to be seen. I hung up the race suit, but found inspiration in using race skis for seeing the mountains. The Eklutna Traverse has about the same stats as the GT, plus some big glacier crossing for good measure. The Bomber Traverse isn’t too dissimilar from the Gothic Mountain Tour. The Turnagain Traverse isn’t far off the Po4. Little skis in big mountains are a hoot! But alas, the pull of race day whispered.
The whisper wasn’t new, but grew noticeably louder, and spoke with an increasingly foreign accent. I did my fifth Grand Traverse on a bit of a whim a couple years ago and decided then that even being an erstwhile racer, I could still race once in a while. The whisper was now a chirp, like the batteries on a smoke alarm needing to be changed out, not to be ignored. Most skimo racers will have heard this noise in their head on some skin track at some point. It’s the call of Gruyere cheese and fine chocolate, the sound of beer filling steins in thousand year old mountain taverns, pastries on trams, and tiny European men running through the mountains at breakneck pace. I am of course talking about the PDG.
The PDG is the goal. A big PDG landscape and human scale skiers. Photo: Débora Rothenbühler
Established in 1943, the Patrouille des Glaciers races once every two years from Zermatt to Verbier. This is a team race (teams of three) that crosses 35 miles with 14,000ft of elevation gain. Along with the Pierra Menta and the Mezzalama, the PDG is part of the ‘big three’ of ski mountaineering races. It’s the benchmark for all other skimo races.
My buddy Andy and I had been talking about a big trip somewhere this spring and threw out the idea of skiing in the alps and finally racing the PDG. There is a lottery for entry, so we roped in a third and figured we’d leave our participation up chance—we got in. Not only that, we are one of only ten American teams in the field. So, now we find ourselves with the weight of a nation resting squarely on our shoulders. Is it a big responsibility? Yes. Am I up to the task? Certainly not. Can my team and I swoop in and impress the Swiss cheese outta those euro speedsters? No way. Can we shuffle across the finish line in an unremarkably average style? Maybe, just maybe we can….
I’ve raced with Andy before, we did the GT together a while back. Maresa, our third teammate, is newer to racing, but has an overwhelmingly positive mountain attitude. We will have a blast, but in order to achieve this lofty mid-pack goal, it’s time to start training. The good news is that this is a ski race, and skiing is fun.
Lycra has been in my past—it remains in my future.
Now in my thirties, if I race off the couch I will fall apart. I am a dad, ostensibly working, no longer invincible, and lately anemic. Training has to be a bit more deliberate than it used to be. Although I am also on sabbatical from teaching this year, which makes consistency an easier lift. Still, big days can be hard to come by, so my training strategy leans heavily on volume. I have a hard time getting away for a 12 hour mission, but I can dart to the mountains five days a week, and luckily can squeeze in a lot of volume in aggregate.
Training plans are ubiquitous these days, and a zillion of online offerings will tailor a race plan for you. I am ignoring this trend, and instead wrote up a schedule of volume goals for the next fifteen weeks. Once a month, I schedule in an active rest week (for me this means cross-training). My math is fairly simple: ski bunches and ratchet up. While we have no ambition of eeking into top percentiles, I want the race to be a genuinely good time moving fast with friends in the mountains. I want to overtrain and have race day be a notch back from my season PRs to keep it as type one fun as possible. Essentially, I want to train to go faster than we end up going.
The training basics involve squeezing in the vert locally.
Here are the training basics:
Weeks 1 – 4
I am working on base building and consistency. I won’t train too much out of my zone 2 heart rate to keep recovery time down. During this stretch, I am skiing four or five times a week, lifting weights twice a week. I am less worried about specific targets, but as I ratchet up volume, I’ll track my max day. Week three I will dial total volume back down, and shoot for a bigger max day on the weekend – likely 10,000ft vert and 15 miles. I will keep big days on my regular touring gear, it’s more fun and better training.
Weeks 5 – 8
I will work in intervals and more strength training. For me, this also means making the effort to work on pacing, one of my weaknesses. To work on this, I’ll do short lap intervals where I start slow and get faster with each lap. I’ll do distance in race gear (La Sportiva Raceborg boots and Trab Gara Aero skis), but I’ll keep on bigger skis for bigger outings (I’ll pow ski in Fischer Transalps boots and 114 underfoot G3 Slayr skis, and do higher pace days on Fischer Travers boots and Cirque 84 skis), and I’ll ratchet up the weights. I will try to get my weekly volume close to peak here, and I’ll switch to exclusively light beer.
Weeks 9 – 12
I will start getting worried about injury. I will dial back volume, but ramp up my weekend big day. I plan to ski more for fun, while also working on longer day pacing. I will do a max vert day, probably around 20k–I will pick a lap in the hills and see how much vert I can ski from dawn to dusk; I’ll be in race gear and ski for around 12 hours. This sounds masochistic, I know, but man does it make race day vert feel waaaay easier. I am signed up for the Grand Traverse this season too (if you’re racin’, why not race), so my rest week here will be tapering ahead of the GT, then I’ll have my max mileage by going from CB to Aspen.
Weeks 13 – 15
I’ll be in the alps eating croissants. I hope to get to ski some Euro classics for acclimatization, but will also be tapering way down.
Trusting in the training process. Alaska terrain helps the motivation too.
This plan is at best pseudo-scientific, but the volume first strategy has worked for me in the past. My goal again is to have fun and have race day feel well within my norms for the season. I know others like putting it all out there, but I’d rather built a ship for rough seas and then coast. I know my weaknesses are foot issues, hydration, and burning out too quickly by not managing my pace—all things I will work on. My biggest skimo challenge is that I live in Anchorage and our ski areas do not allow any uphilling. [Yea, Alyeska, it’s time to work on that! I know, you blast lots of avy terrain and are short staffed in the mornings…other resorts have figured out work-arounds and uphilling brings in a ton of business. Many of us locals would love to help find something that works; nearly all North American resorts now allow and make money off of uphill athletes….]. Without quick groomers, I use single track bike trails, snow machine trails, and the well-traveled town routes in the Chugach Front Range for rando gear, more on that in a future post. I also do plenty of nordic skiing with my year and half year old in a backpack.
I think it’s important to remember that skiing is supposed to be fun. While I firmly believe in the philosophy of ABT, always be training, I am also really just looking forward to the excuse for always taking one more lap when the snow is good. I am sure I will ski plenty of windboard at night, but the road is long enough that plenty of pow will be had along the way. Races are an awesome motivator, and I am as excited for the road to the PDG as I am for landing in the Alps.
The road to race day has begun, may it be long, arduous, painful, and splendid.
Links below to our three-part series on the PDG (By Dave Riggs).
Part 1: You Should Race the PdG. Here’s Why.
Part 2: Entry, Logistics, Gear, Etc.
