Back to Work

After recovering and making new plans following the Power of Four trail run, we are back to work. Using Volt by Gatorade and Nike Training Club, we are trying to find routine in our strength training. The focus is for full body endurance and strength given that skimo and sky running truly engage the whole body through and through.

For the past several years both of us have been using Apple watches for tracking our training. There is a lot to like about the Apple watch and it is a great smart watch in addition to being a good tracker. We found, however, that they just weren’t adequate for endurance sports, let alone endurance sports in the cold. Both of our watches died 4-5 hours into every event we participated in over the past year. While this is fine for something like the Colfax marathon events, it only occurred to me how dangerous it could be during something like the Grand Traverse. With 10-15 miles left of backcountry travel during the GT, we had no idea where we were, how far we had gone, or even what time it was. This just won’t work moving forward.

Since the Apple watch wasn’t quite enough, we did our research and decided that the new Suunto 9 would be a good fit moving forward. With incredible battery life and all the features you could want in a tracker, the Suunto has barely left my wrist. An 8 hour 14.5 mile hike with nearly 5,000 vertical feet of climbing confirmed what a great device it would be for us. With a fresh charge, Maggie’s watch died half way in and I was still running at the end with over 70% of battery at the least efficient battery setting.

Needless to say, we are excited to be moving forward with our training and having some serious metrics to back up our training and recovery plans.