Season Analysis

 This year saw a vast improvement. A month into the season in prior years, I struggled for full 3 days even after cutting back both the skiing intensity and hours by half. This year, I continue to ski hard at the end of the season.  And yet, I'm spending less time in the dog pound, and it is mostly in the afternoon that I struggle, not the whole day. 

When I started to struggle two months into the season, I decided to hit the road for a shot of dopamine. I went to Park City, Utah and skied for 3 days in a row. That seems to have reset the season and I was able to ski hard for the rest of the season. Here is the post-ski recovery data:

At the first glance, the pattern looks random. But the first half of the season becomes discernable if you remove the first day of skiing which resulted in a long struggle because of deconditioning. Then the recovery time increases gradually from 1 day to 3 days over the period of 2 months. The pattern repeats in the second half after the trip to Utah and a break of 1 month following the trip, if you remove: 1) #11 which resulted in a struggle after a month-long break due to deconditioning and 2) #12 when I skied hard 4 hours nonstop because the storm was coming at 1PM and Here is pattern with those adjustments:

I've been skiing hard from all season long from the get-go. That probably explains the long 4-day struggle after the first day when I wasn't in shape. That is normal. What is not normal is the progressive worsening. Healthy people should struggle less as the season progresses and they get into shape. The worsening can be explained only with fading Novelty Effect: as the newness of skiing fades, so does the dopamine level. The post-ski struggle, which gets suppressed by dopamine, gradually takes over and the struggle worsens.

While there has been a great improvement, the post-exercise fatigue still remains excessive.  While may take several days even for a healthy person to recover from a hard skiing, the fatigue should not be debilitating. But I still conk out in the afternoons during the recovery. It is a problem that still needs to be fixed for the full recovery. Maybe One more season of Electric Hobo will take care of it.