Illinoistocht

The Hennepin canal, Illinois and Michigan canal, and Old Plank Rail Trail make for a great summer outing.  Whether you ride a bicycle across the entire width of Illinois by following these trails or whether you ride a 5 mile section of the trail, the trails can make for an epic ride or just a fun family outing.  The I&M canal trail has a nice section that is not that far from Chicago starting around Channahon—in the Channahon area, there are two locks, a locktender’s house, and the trail goes over a bridge over the DuPage river.  Rather walk than ride?  Want to cover the distance of the entire Hennepin canal trail?  The Friends of the Hennepin offers group hikes of 3 to 5 miles on the 2nd or 3rd Sunday of each month.  The “Hike the Hennepin Challenge” has been developed by the Friends of the Hennepin Canal as an opportunity for everyone to get to know the Canal personally by hiking the entire canal (including the Feeder Canal) in small sections.  You need not be a member of the Friends to join them in any of the hikes.  Wherever and however you enjoy the canals, they provide pleasant scenery, a little history, and best of all, they are mostly (if not entirely in some sections) free of road intersections.

The training programs for a cycling century or a running marathon generally have several common features:

1)             Often a 10 or 16 week program, and it’s assumed that the athlete started the program with an already established solid endurance foundation. 

2)             Shorter distances during the week, with some speedwork, and then a long ride (or run or skate) once a week, probably on the weekend.  The mileage is gradually increased each week, with the long run itself increasing to 60% to 75% of the event distance.

3)             Taper in the final 1 – 2 weeks where mileage is reduced.

The Bicycling Magazine link is similar although it talks in terms of time spent training rather than distance: the “peak” week of training occurs in week 7 with Monday off, Tuesday ride at 1.5 hours at endurance pace, Wednesday ride 1.5 hours endurance pace, Thursday 1 hour at recovery pace, Friday 0.5 hour recovery pace, Saturday 5 hour ride, and Sunday 2 hours at endurance pace. 

To adapt a bike century program to a skating marathon training plan, compromises may need to be made, particularly if the participant doesn’t live near natural ice or a 400m oval.  Not only can finding a place to train on ice be a problem, but outdoor cross training can be difficult in winter weather.  And nearly all the training will occur in early to mid-winter given that the ice marathons are in mid- to late-winter (late January for the Alternative Elfstedentocht in Weissensee, Austria, and late February for the Sweden and the Finland ice marathons).   

Looking at the training plan, for the weekday sessions, 2 or 3 one hour sessions on ice on those days would be great, but cross-training activities can be substituted including dryland training, slideboard training, stationary bicycle, or even short-track speed skating, all of which can be done indoors and are reasonably available.  The “long ride” on the weekend is more problematic.  In warmer climates, inline skating can be substituted (if you have leather boots you may want to utilize clunkier, but more comfortable, boots with a foam liner).  In cold climates in areas that lack a natural ice course cleared of snow, it may be possible to utilize cross-country skate skiing for some of the sessions.  And finally, there is the option to journey to a 400m oval or to natural ice (see the Links and Speed Skating pages on this website).   A first skate marathon is probably going to be like a lot of first-time marathon runners (meaning out to complete the distance and not worry so much about your time), but it helps to have gradually increased skating mileage leading to the event—for a 200km marathon, you’ll need to skate at around 20km (12.4 mph) to finish in 10 hours, and remember its winter so you don’t have too much more daylight.   

I’ll comment on dryland training in a future blog.  If you’ve trained for a cycling century or especially an ice skating marathon, please share your thoughts and ideas.  In the meantime, the ice has thawed and it’s time to get on the bike!