Training Log Archive: biggins

ASC. A couple inches of new snow, over some pretty solid new stuff from last night. Plus I waxed, so it was much more slippy slidey than yesterday.

Some new snow last night, about a foot up at ASC, but only a couple inches at the house (probably not enough to open up TD again). They had groomed fairly recently, but some trails more recently than others, so a few had an inch on them and a few had six. Not sure what random wax was on the skis, but it certainly wasn't new-wet-40-degree-snow wax.

A couple laps around ASC. Soft and mushy, and just starting this week's drizzle.

easy garage ski

C • ha 2

Easy ride around the neighborhood, because its ridiculously warm and sunny outside. Also I wanted to stretch my legs but not my shoulders (the dad shoulder started getting sore again about halfway through Saturday). Also its not like there's anywhere to go skiing even if I wanted too. I <3 winter.

Its cold outside in WI. So we drove back to Minneapolis and watched the lego movie instead, which was awesome.

C • Everything is awesome. 5

Event: American Birkebeiner
 

morning freezy jog

Birkie! A foot+ of cold snow on Thursday night meant the trail was super duper soft, plus it was down around 0 for the start. We managed to get there on time, but the lodge was closed and the warming tent had fallen over, so I just ran around a bit for the half hour I had to kill. There was a lot of complaining going around about how cold it was and hour bad the snow was going to be, and I couldn't decide if I wanted to wait until the last minute to dump the poofy jacket and duck into the back of the start line, or if everyone else was going to wimp out and I should go through the chutes and stand in the wind in a race suit at 0 degrees for 20 minutes to get to the front row of the line. In the end common sense lost and I was shivering my ass off on the front row of wave 1. Totally worth it. By the time we got off the runway at the end of the field I was only 100m behind the front of the wave, there were no accordions going on at all, and I had snow to myself for pretty much the whole race. It was night and day from last year. Also got a big bonus from being towards the front, as only a couple hundred people were in front of me in total, so the soft snow was still reasonably solid now and then, which gave some good rest now and then. Most of it was still junk, but not nearly as bad as it would have been at the back of the wave or in any of the later ones.

Race went really well all things considered. I felt mostly fine the whole time. The wax was squeaky the whole race, but I don't know if I could have done much better. I'd get bogged down in the soft snow where it was bad, but decided I'd just beast mode through it and hope there was solid snow soon to drop the heart rate back down. Worked most of the time, but on some of the long stretches of bad snow I'd fall off behind the packs of all the stupid skinny guys.

The lake at the end sucked, it was soft and drifted, and straight into a really cold headwind, enough that I was only doing 4:30/km on a dead flat lake. There were other people around, but they were either short or slow or both, no good for drafting at all. So I pulled a couple people across all by myself, and then dropped them on the last half km into town, which felt good.

Got to the finish and my bag hadn't arrived yet (along with most of wave 1's). You'd think the trucks would go faster than we were skiing, but no. (also see: Alex and Ali's epic morning bus failure). So I hid sopping wet in front of one of the heat blowers for 40 minutes while Alex chased down every new bag truck looking for my dry clothes.

Generally happy with the race. The times were super slow, but I finished in 218th, up 30 places from last year.

C • Nice race, and a good job m... 10

Made it to minneapolis ok, both flight were right on time (it's 1:30am). Except the jetway in MSP was encased in ice, so they couldn't get it to move over to the plane. So we sat on the plane at the gate for half an hour while they ran into it with a pickup truck until it broke free.

C • ETA? 3

Up around the lower top loop at TD. There's not really any snow left at the bottom, so they've groomed a frankentrail randomly up through the snow patches to get towards the top of the mountain.

A couple laps around ASC. They got all the rest of their main trails open, so its pretty nice up there now.

C • Hayward 2

Ski with Carol up at Royal Gorge. It froze nicely last night, so the trails were actually ok (and they didn't groom in the morning!). Lots of snow up high, enough snow but lots of open water in the meadow, and mostly dirt around the ski lodge.

And it was 48 degrees when we got up today. There's not much snow left on the bottom at all, it was a lot of picking through rocks and dirt to get up to the top trails. Skied with Carol for a bit, then she bailed and I headed up to the ridge. Its super windy today (100mph up on the crest, not this ridge), and I just kindof wanted to try to ski up there in it. Mission accomplished. It was pretty sweet. Also the snow was really good up there, I think the wind helped dry it out a lot, so after they groomed it last night it actually set up better than it was yesterday, despite only getting down to 45 last night.

It stopped raining, but it still hasn't been below 40 degrees in two nights, so everything is pretty mushy. All the bottom trails are closed, so I did two laps around the top end, which was mostly just climbing. The top ridge was actually frozen and really nicely groomed, but the 40mph winds made that a one-way trip.

and its raining again. yay.

Look I went outside! It poured all weekend (8" of liquid precip), but we only got a couple inches of snow at the house. The top of the mountain here got a couple feet, and squaw got like 8ft. The xc area finally opened back up today after [most of] the water drained out, and the trails weren't in too bad shape. The bottom half were about as crappy as they started, but the top half opened up a lot of new trails that were all in pretty good shape.

So I rocked a long ski, which felt ok. Got some good heel blisters, which might have been building on last week. Had food every 45 minutes this time, alternating GU and mini clif bars, which worked better. Though the clif bars are kindof hard to stomach, and the first one came right after the 10 minute climb to the top of the mountain, which almost made me puke. Also probably need salt tablets. The snow was corn snowy and fast at the start, but its sunny and warm today so the last two hours were mush.

C • snow 3

Its gross outside. Rainy snowing, and the trails are a couple inches of totally saturated slop.

An inch or so of new snow, just enough to cover the rocks. We're supposed to get a big storm this weekend, but its also supposed to warm up a bunch so the middle part of it will probably be rain. Boo. We just have to hope that the amount of new snow is more than the amount washed out by the rain.

Long ski day. Snow was crunchy fast, and most of the rocky patches are now well defined, so you at least know where they are. Cold out (low 30s), so the snow stayed in good shape even when I finished at 2pm. Had 3 GUs (on the hours) and a bottle of water, which definitely wasn't enough, I was starving by 2:40 and 3:40, and started to get pretty tired and chilly for the last hour.

In other news, the shoe log says the 2011 Fischer ski-o sacrifice skis hit 2000 miles yesterday, which I'll say is pretty impressive for any piece of gear destined to hold my body weight through the ski-o related abuse I put it through.

C • snow 3

Morning ski with Jonathan around TD. The tracks were a little dodgy for the dp, since the skate lane is only a couple inches deep, and the tracks are even closer to the rocks.

Hill climb day with Jonis, up to the top of the mountain. Trails were in a little better shape today, as everyone has picked out most of the loose rocks that popped up.

Event: BAOC: 2014 Sierra Ski-O Tour
 

Around TD in the new snow. Soft and powdery, which wasn't great with the rock skis. But there were also lots of rocks.