Training Log Archive: biggins

Skate around the amusement park a few times, then some more playing on the skinny trails up the hill by the hotel. The amusement park would make such a great sprint venue, they've groomed trails wandering in and through all the rollercoasters and rides. Adrian and John appeared last night, and Sharon showed up today after getting delayed and bumped and spending a few hours in Bejing (not really between Denver and Sapporo?). Training race tomorrow over at the Otaki map from yesterday, hopefully with a few more trails made.

training at the Otaki map. another small simple area, but much flatter this time, so you could really cruise around the trails.

Otaki is a normal xc area, so after the ski-o trails I went out for a ski along the river.

here is the training area around the hotel, and here is the one at Otaki. and here are some here ponies. random terrain shot with Canadian MC.

I don't have my image index program on the laptop and I can't seem to find it for download, so I'll have to figure something out for getting pics out en masse.

training around the hotel area, plus a loop through the amusement park. this place is pretty sweet.

Training at the Rusutsu Resort map. really small area, but big enough to entertain me for an hour. maybe go out again later with Alan. Found MC from Canadia at breakfast, she went to the other area today, not sure how that one is. Snow is greasy and fast and bottomless. Its been snowing since we got here. Horray for 4" pole baskets! Time to go eat bear flavored ramen.

C • Hi! 2

C • Bear flavored ramen 8

C • Good Luck! 2

out again in the afternoon at the hotel. more snow since this morning, but still nice and fast. Even dragged Alan out for a bit.

travel day. or two. or three. not sure how to count the hours? it started on tuesday morning and ended on thursday morning, but wasn't really that long. plane flights were ok, just long. found Alan in Tokyo no problem, no trouble with the bags or anything. Bus to the resort was sweet, it had chandileers for lights. pics later when I figure out this internet thing.

easy skate down at the beach. sunny and warm, but raining enough that concrete was wet, so I couldn't turn too fast.

On the birkie trail from Mosquito Brook north for a bit. Much colder than yesterday, and the trail was rock hard, so it was super fast. Except for the parts where they drove the snowmobiles down the middle of the trail, which was most of it.

Birkie. Got an inch of new snow overnight, and everything turned to sugar snow immediately, even from wave 1. Wax felt slow almost the whole time. A little bit of snow during the race, a pretty good headwind coming across the lake at the end.
5k splits (last year):
19:04
17:54
17:39
16:16
16:21
15:11
17:00
17:15
18:01
15:58

C • Sugar snow 4

Skied the end of the Korte trail backwards from the finished to loop around the fearsome Mt Telemark.

Quick ski on the birkie trail at Mosquito Brook.

easy jog around the block after work

The weather was ok overnight, so I decided to drive back up for another day, hoping they actually groomed at night last night. Also left half an hour earlier, beat the crowds on the drive up, and got there two hours earlier. So I slept in the parking lot for a bit. Snow was great, nice and solid but not icy at all, which is rare down here. Only punching through in a few spots on the corners where the groomer was misbehaving. A little cloudy all day so it never got too warm. Two laps: 45/46

two more: 49/50

Up to Rim Nordic for the day. Conditions were a disaster! Don't get me wrong, it was 55 and sunny. But they got 8" of superlight fluff on Friday night, so the roads were a mess (chain control = bring out the best in people), and since they didn't groom the trails until the morning they basically weren't groomed at all. I was punching through with both skis flat, nevermind if I tried to skate. It got better as the day went on, it got warmer and heavier, and the trails had time to harden up. But definitely couldn't push too hard.

and again

and again again

you know I'm desperate for training when I start running in the morning again.

felt pretty quick today, probably because of the easy week.

Ghetto ski up at Mt Pinos. The road was closed way down at the bottom (junction with pine mt club), but the other side of the gate was also plowed down there (not so good for skiing). So I did some dodgy backcountry double poling (and a lot of herringbone) randomly up the side of the mountain. It actually wasn't too bad, there was a couple inches of fluff, and I didn't seem to be grinding into the ground at all. Kinda fun to be cruising through the trees on the flat parts. After a while I got up to a ridge where I could see back down to the road, and turns out it was only plowed for half a mile or so past the gate. So I dropped down to there and headed up the road. It varied from ok (two inches on top of windblown crust) to painful (8 inches of mashed potatoes). So basically like Royal Gorge. Made it up to McGill, where since it was a lot higher (7500 vs 6k at the start) it was pretty consistently the 8" of potato variety. Going down was pretty uneventful, by then it was warm down low and everything was saturated, so I had no glide at all. But still not bad for 100 miles from home. pics

Then just for kicks I got about 10 miles down the road driving home and started hearing a metal-on-metal screaching sound coming from the car. Actually I think I was listening to GNR or something at the time and then song ended but the death metal guitar didn't. Anyway I poked around a bit to see if I could see anything hanging off the bottom, couldn't, and so screached my way down to the highway (only another couple miles). Pulled into a good-old-boy car shop where they put it up on the lift, whacked the front wheel with a gigantic wrench a couple times (why is this a recurring theme for how people fix my car?), and declared it fixed. Apparrently there's a heat shield for the brakes that got bent into the rim (caught a rock or something) and was making lots of noise but not actually breaking too much. Anyway 20 minutes and $50 later its good as new and I'm headed home again.

Also I got a mac yesterday. Its so cute.

C • Mt Pinos 1

nice ride, sunny with random rain showers. felt winded the whole time, not sure if it was because the legs are out of shape, or because the nerves aren't numb to afternoon traffic anymore. although looking at the time, I was averaging just about 20mph, which I rarely do around here even during bike season. so maybe I was just going fast.

so I think the rollerskis might be finally toast. I'm no mechanical genius, but I think this part is supposed to be one piece.

also, photos from the Tahoe ski-o.

C • Epoxy! 2

C • nice boots 6

Race 5, Auburn Ski Club
Great race. This is definitely the most detailed map of the week, tons of trails packed into a tiny area so we had a 3-loop motala. Felt a little winded on some of the hills (short and choppy, no long ones) but otherwise felt ok. Had a really clean race navigationally, only one mistake where I didn't go far enough and doubled back for a hundred meters or so. Won by a couple minutes over Mikkel.

Great week of races. Came in second for the series scoring because of the boot difficulties on Tuesday, but it was great to have a pretty big group of people on blue all gunning for the front each day.

Control pickup with Dad.