I came to a realization concerning my training. I felt my cycling routine was getting stagnant, and the dreary, wet weather made me long for snow. We finally got snow. Good snow. In fact, the Michigan Tech Trails now have a nice base layer of snow and people have been skiing for several weeks.

I decided to go skiing after church on Sunday. I packed up my things, went to Mass, and headed to the ski trail for my inaugural skate of the 2008-2009 season. I was nervous. I thought I was going to fall flat on my face. I thought it was going to be difficult and my out-of-shape body was going to rebel.

My goal was to do the green loops as a seasonal warm-up. I wanted to skate ski for two hours, but I wasn’t expecting to actually do that. I skied all the green loops and found myself gliding into the first of a three-loop series of blue trails. I tackled it. Then I tackled the other two. It was climbing up the hill on the last two loops that made me cry uncle and decide to quit when I got back to the parking lot. I headed for the trailhead and found myself gliding back onto a green loop, again. Ok, I’ll skate two of the green loops that have fun little runs. I really didn’t have to convince myself. It was fun!

I finished the last run and skated toward the trailhead and then veered right back onto another green loop. Before I knew it, I did all but two green loops a second time! Yeah, I was having fun.

When I made the entry into my training log, I found that I had finished all of these loops in one hour and fifty-five minutes. This was a record time! Not only did I manage to skate without merging my face with the snow, but I managed to do it in spectacular form with a personal record. What a great way to start a season!

My realization was that sport cycling is a critical component of my year-round training program. Just as cycling was becoming old hat and improvement had waned considerably, the time came to switch to my winter sport of cross-country skate skiing. What I’ve found over the course of the last three years, currently entering into my fourth season, is that these two sports complement each other spectacularly! They maximize the use of muscles that the other doesn’t, yet the development of these muscles is critical for moving to the next level. For example, skate skiing maximizes the use of my quads and glutes, to a much greater degree than cycling. Unlike cycling, I can’t change my form or cadence to allow for active recovery of these muscles. I have to use these muscles if I expect to glide up a hill with any speed. It is a lot of work. Come spring, my cycling suddenly shows significant improvement because of the cross-training over the winter, and vice versa. Climbing especially benefits.

While riding once every one or two weeks throughout the winter is useful for muscle memory, having a different, dominant sport in the off-season can produce drastic improvement over the winter. I’ve been forced into this method because of the weather changes in my area, but I enjoy the diversity and the rest. In the end, my body thanks me because it gets to rest chronically abused parts for a season while building up different areas. This method is good not only for performance improvement, but for minimizing the chances of an overuse injury, keeping the mind fresh, and strengthening weaknesses that could otherwise become a persistent problem.

In a nutshell, cross-training is all it is hyped up to be.