Training Log Archive: biggins

woohoo found the car. apparently the coyotes have been using it for a howling perch while I was gone. that only took three hours. good thing I woke up at 4.

wow we got snow last week. sucks to be the people living in my building on the floors previously known as one and two. sunshine is overrated anyway.

Home sweet home. Warm and sunny, smells like baked pine trees. Easy ski around the valley. Solid snow, but not too fast given the 60-degreeness.

Dec: 591km / 53 hours of skiing. 10.3 hours / 112km / 131 controls of ski-o
Jan: 658km / 49.5 hours of skiing. 7.6 hours / 97km / 141 controls of ski-o
Feb: 671km / 51 hours of skiing. 3.5 hours / 48km / 64 controls of ski-o

just over a month of ski season left. race tomorrow, hard week of dp next week, easy training fieldtrip to Mora the next week, then ski-woc!

Airplane day. First two flights went ok, got to Salt Lake with an easy 45 minutes to clear customs / wait for skis / recheck skis / resecurity / get to gate (and it's still easier and less stressful than transferring through paris this morning). Got to the gate as they we about to start boarding, and they were oversold, so I jumped on that for $200, a free pizza dinner, and a first class ticket 1.5 hours later. Honestly I would have done it for just the pizza, Remy isn't picking me up in Reno until 2 hours after the first flight anyway, so I'm waiting on both ends either way. Almost home. Then to dig out the car. Ha.

Tried to ski the other loop in Torgnon, but it turned out that their 10k look was really 1.5, so we headed back out the loop from yesterday. Got to the end of the flat bit and today it was groomed up the big hill, but for some reason Carol didn't want to do that part. She headed back and I headed up, got to the top in some broken clouds and caught some views of the Matterhorn for a few minutes before lots of clouds came in and it started snowing.

We moved across the Aosta valley to Torgnon, which is perched way high up on a steep hillside, just barely at the snowline. The skiing starts a little higher up, so there was plenty for the trails, though the first bit went through the downhill area and so was kindof crappy and icy. But then it got into the woods and was really nice, and mostly flat for five km or so. Then it started going up the side of the mountain, and also turned ungroomed, so it got a wee bit slower. It was warm and sunny though, and we made it all the way up. In theory the end had some awesome views of the Matterhorn (which is at the top end of our valley), but it was all clouded over so no luck. Carol got a quick glimpse of it for a minute, but I was peeing on the other side of the ridge so I missed it. Still awesome views in all the other directions though, so totally worth it.

C • photos 2

Morning ski up the bottom part of the marathon loop, which was right along the main river.

On the advice of Marc we headed down to Cogne in Italy, which sortof involved driving under Mont Blanc. Lots of snow up in the Cogne valley, which is a wickedly steep walled valley with lots of cliffs and frozen waterfalls. There's a marathon here, the Marcia Gran Paradiso, which looks like the course would be lots of fun except its classic. But the trails are nice, all in the bottom of the valleys out in three directions from Cogne, with a few crazy hills but mostly long slow climbs. Around freezing the whole time, some snow showers and some sun, but pretty nice, and Carol didn't die learning to skate either, which she somehow was already really good at.

Up the valley in the other direction towards Lillaz, which had lots more waterfalls. Apparently this place is pretty big for ice climbing in the winter, and I think we drove by the Grivel shop down in the main valley.

C • hey! they made my 1st crampons 1

Italy!
"I'm not sure which course this was, but it looks delicious..."
"Its a hockey puck of cheese, wrapped in bacon, and grilled."
"Excellent."