Keeping Up with the Boys (or at least trying to)

Hi everyone! For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Gretta Scholz, and I am on the Continental team of Snø Racing! I also happen to be the only girl racing on the domestic circuit on Snø this year. I am lucky enough to have both Luci Anderson and Alayna Sonnesyn as my female teammates; however, both of their respective goals take them to different parts of the country and world for training, making me often the only girl training in the Twin Cities and Snø Racing camps. Spending the training season with a predominantly male team has been both interesting and challenging. I have had to be more creative and resilient in my own training while also pushing myself in ways my training previously didn’t require. 

To be completely honest, training as the lone woman on a team of twelve men has been both frustrating as well as rewarding. There are many days when I know I am capable of keeping up with the group, but it is in my best interest to slow down and stay in my L1 zone. This can be frustrating. It isn’t the most fun to do a two-hour ski completely alone. However, I do think it forces me to focus on my own training and getting the most out of the workout for myself, which in its own way can be rewarding. On threshold days, I do the intervals alone; I can control the pace on every interval and increase the speed and difficulty where I need, based on my own heart rate and lactate. This is the most controlled and effective way for me to do threshold intervals and, at the end of the day, more beneficial for my training, even if I am doing them solo. Going forward into fall training when we increase L4 interval days I will need to get more creative. I can’t always get into that zone completely alone, and with the lack of female teammates of a similar level, I will need to figure out some ways to simulate the competition of races and motivate myself to get into that race zone and speed before the season starts. 

Part of dealing with the reality that I cannot always keep up with the group of all-male athletes is getting creative with training and setting myself up for success. This has been a bit of trial and error, and there have been both good and bad days. One of the things that has made some of the longer days more manageable is inviting female friends to join for some of the longer workouts, so I have someone to go with if the boys' speed is just too high for me on the day. Having the group of college boys around this summer has also been awesome. We often have a similar L1 pace, and it has been great having them around for longer distance workouts! Another extremely helpful thing is having some of the faster boys ski on their slowest wheels (Swenor 3’s or 4’s). This both makes the pace more manageable for me in L1 as well as creates more resistance training for them, so it’s a win-win! I also try to make the weeks where Luci and/or Alayna are around as productive as possible and train as much with them as I can. They are both very experienced and accomplished skiers, and I can learn a lot from skiing with/behind them. This can be especially valuable for having someone to chase and really push me in harder intervals. 

While working through the long workouts on my own has been difficult, and I do have some concerns about finding productive ways to push myself through L4 sets, I think speeds with the boys has been incredibly beneficial. This is the one thing that pushing myself to stay with the boys is the productive choice. Mentally and physically pushing myself to really go as fast as I can and keep up in ~15-20 sec speeds has definitely increased my top speed. It has also helped with the mental aspect. Telling myself there’s no reason I can’t keep up for 15 seconds at a time can be applied anywhere I am trying to push myself at top speed and something I think I can take into shorter L4 sessions this fall, there’s no reason I can’t push myself and keep up!