From the title of this, you can probably already guess that cross-training and I have a complex relationship. This week was my first week diving back in (quite literally) to one of the backbones of my training week; cross-training doubles.
In college especially in the Fall and into the early portion of the Spring, I doubled a lot. Usually, these were twenty-minute runs later in the day after a harder session. Sometimes they were great and sometimes my legs felt like absolute garbage. When I came to DTC I fully expected doubles to still be in my training equation. I saw plenty of other pro's throwing up lots of mileage for their weeks and double so why wouldn't I?
These days I couldn't really tell you off the top of my head how far I run in a week. Sure I know how far my long run is and I can tell you how many miles I did roughly in a session, but I'm not fixated on adding everything up in the same way I was in college. I don't run in little circles to hear my Garmin buzz and hit a full mile (I honestly never realized how dumb this is until my now coach made fun of me for it). I also don't double with "junk" miles. If I do double with a run it's with intentionally good mechanics which means my pace is decently quick, but mostly we don't double with runs at all, we cross-train.
Why?
I think a lot of people are surprised when I tell them how much we actually cross-train verses run, but in a lot of ways, it makes sense for our event group. We can get in the same cardio as we would with loading up the miles, it helps prevent injury (especially overuse ones), improves efficiency through increased muscle fiber recruitment, and allows for recovery. As Tom likes to say it's our "secret weapon".
Weekly schedule
One day of our training week, Wednesday, is solely dedicated to cross-training while the rest of the time we use it after a workout session. Our doubles on workout days are interval-based, 3-4 minutes moderately hard, 1 minute easy on the elliptical or 30-second water run, 1-2 laps hard freestyle.
My personal favorite for cross-training is swimming. My least favorite? Is definitely swimming. Why? It's the hardest for me, especially when I'm out of shape, but I feel like I get the most out of it. I feel like time flies when you're on the bike or the elliptical, especially when you've got a good playlist, but laps in the pool just hit different. Swimming for me is as much mental training as it is physical. Lucky for me my first double back was the pool.
Since Julia and I are sharing a gym pass we're going to be cross-training buddies for the next few months. Having someone to suffer with at least makes it slightly more enjoyable. We dove in and after what felt like at least ten laps back and forth we stopped and checked the watch only to realize we weren't even halfway through our ten-minute warm-up. I think we both let out an audible groin before resuming. Not only does it feel like time moves slower in the pool, but what really sucks is feeling like you may actually die during a workout. After not swimming since my brief foray with some open water in June, I felt like the Grimm reaper was on my shoulder more than once in that 4-foot deep lap pool.
I'm over here choking on overly chlorinated water, my life flashing before my eyes after the second round of our 1 lap hard, 30 seconds aqua jog. Okay, okay maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but panic definitely played a big role in how high my heart rate got from that swim session. Trying to stay calm and keep your mechanics in check when you feel like your about to drown is more difficult than any running workout I've ever done. It's why I feel like the pool is such a game-changer, it's mentally and physically challenging unlike anything else I do.
While cross-training might be our secret weapon, it's no secret that the benefits are real and while the pool and I have a love-hate relationship it's nice to be back in it.
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