Training Log Archive: biggins

Ski-woc Long.
Not the greatest race, but then again my longs rarely are. Weather was slightly better than usual, only snowing for half of it, and only somewhat insanely windy.

The highlights:

- The mass start had 600m of marked route and then climbed up over the bridge over the road, single file.

- The first control on each of our three loops was up at the top of the map, like a zillion contours up.

- I made a lot of bad route choices, I think because I was trying to avoid some of the narrow stuff, but the big stuff wasn't too fast anyway because it was soft.

- Second loop I took a route to the first control that did the whole climb on a snowmobile road, except it wasn't as wide as I was expecting, so it sucked a lot. I could skate, but couldn't get much glide with each stride. And by then it was too late to bail to a bigger trail. That was a long climb.

- Even with Scott on the equipment control on the second loop, but then I went high on a big trail to the next one, and he cut across the middle on the little stuff and gained lots of minutes. Never saw him again.

- Took another terrible route choice at the end of the second loop, I think I was only a couple trails away and a few contours below the control, and all it would have needed was a horizontal cut, which was probably already there. But instead I dropped down and around and came at it from the back side, which added lots of climb and probably many times the distance. It made sense at the time.

- Coming down a long steep hill into a t-junction I tried to cut the corner, but hit lots of powder too fast and faceplanted, mangled my map holder beyond recognition, and stabbed myself in the leg really deeply with a pole. I heard somebody coming down behind me and idly wondered if I was totally buried in snow and about to get run over, and then Nikolay faceplanted right beside me.

- I had gained a minute or so on Nikolay after the big climb on the last leg, but then going across the horizontal at the top my map holder, which I had managed to bend back so it was roughly pointing outwards and only listing 45 degrees to the side, blew open in the wind and the map went flying. Fortunately it was windblown and crusty, so I could sortof dp after it across the fields, though not too fast. Then Nikolay skied by on the trail below and gave me a look like what the hell are you doing on your knees digging around down in a tree well.

- Got another minute or so lead on him on the downhills to the bridge for the final couple controls, went through the second to last one and read the code as 60 and didn't think to much of it, it was in exactly the right spot. Got almost all the way to the last control and was looking at the map for that code, and saw that the last code was 50, not 60. I figured I just read it wrong, the codes are on translucent plastic tags hanging from the horizontal wires, with black sticky numbers on both sides. So when you look through the 50, the 0 from the back side is lined up with the 5, so it could be 50 or 60 or 80. This happened a few times earlier in the week too, so I figured I did the same thing. But I wasn't sure, and I figured I would be less pissed to lose a place to Nikolay than to mispunch, so I doubled way back (100m?) to check it, which burned a bunch of time and he got past me.

So I guess the good news was that I actually did have a lot of good skiing in there, some of the tricky downhills on the narrow stuff I pulled off quite flawlessly. And while I felt pretty trashed on the uphill dps at the end, I think I still ended up stronger than the longs of the past. But I had a couple out of control crashes, and a bunch of pretty bad tiredness-induced route choices that probably cost me lots of minutes.

C • Start bridge 2

Rest day. dp down in the field for a bit, then up on the model map for a bit. Nothing was groomed, since they're all busy for tomorrow, but one small bit of the model map had been skied in by lots of people testing wax.

Morning ski with Ali and Scott out in the fields in the wind and snow to loosen up a little and convince ourselves its not so bad. Not so much of the tracks left, and lots of bonus snow drifts.

Sprint relay. Awesomeness. Sprint relays are so fun. You get to go ski really hard for a little bit, then rest for a bit while Ali does some work, then ski really hard some more, then rest more, then ski more, then shiver and change clothes in a windy snowstorm. Since the loops overlap and are on the same map each time, each leg you get to know a little more about the area and it makes you faster and more confident. The three legs were very different from each other, it wasn't just like simple relay forkings, but they still crossed the same terrain and junctions a bunch.

First leg was ok. I got to the other side of the big field and then tried to find a little trail up in to the woods, but missed it in the drifts and had to cut a ways across some other big drifts to get back on it. Which put me behind the spanish guy, who was going just slower than I was, not really slow enough for me to get around, but enough that I was always on his tails. Also they lowered all the wires with the controls on them, so I caught a control (and the heavy touchless-emit reciever) in the face for a bit of a bloody nose, and also sent the hat flying. Had to turn around to get the hat, as it is fairly magnificent.

C • sprint relay awesomeness 7

Ali had a rockstar second leg and made up a lot of places, so I was just trying not to loose too many. Third leg went really well, I had an easy first control, both navigation and skiing, and everything flowed well from there. More climb in this one, so it felt tougher than the first, but everything was clean and the trails were all where they should have been.

C • Looked like your second leg... 6

Ali had a good fourth leg, then I was back out for the fifth. First control was in the woods a ways off to the right after the lake, but the wind and snow had kicked up so visibility was pretty low when I got there and I didn't want to risk missing the trail in like I did on the first leg. So I went up the big trail and cut over on some little ones (past the first from the last lap). This had some bonus climb in it, but hopefully didn't add too much time, and saved the risk of getting lost in a wide open wind swept field. All good until 4, when I dropped down into the field to get there on the snowmobile road, and ended up skiing directly into the wind. Not so fast. Also super cold. Clean until 7, where I skied through the control but the touchless-emit didn't register, so I had to turn around and backtrack (20 meters maybe? you overshoot by a lot when you're going full speed and expect it to register). Went back to the same control but it still didn't register, the whole emit receiver was dead (I was sure I got close enough the first time), but they've got two controls out at each one, one on either side of the trail (for going both directions), so I hit the other and kept going. Not sure what the time lost was, but it let the german guy pass me.

Yay blizzard. Had a late start, and it was snowing and windy like crazy during the warmup. Tried a bit with glasses and without, neither were very good, and in the end I wore the glasses for the race until they crapped up (maybe 15 mins) and then shoved them down my pants.

First three controls were ok, I took them slow and tried not to get frustrated with the poling on the little trails, which works as long as you stay calm about it. To 4 I contoured across above 1, then took the big trail all the way up above the houses. 5 wasn't so good. I cut southeast by a trail, jogged down and east, then there were a zillion bad cuts out to the snowmobile road so I never saw the real trail and was quickly past everything just above those houses. Took the horizontal trail over until I lost it, the forest on that end of the map is small trees and very open, so the wind and snow had drifted over everything until they were invisible. Trails that had been skied were better, but this was off any of the non-lost routes, so nobody had touched it. Off trail all the way to the control, since I could barely see even the two big trails I crossed. Not so fast on that one. 6 was even more of a disaster, plus I was going straight into the windy snowstorm this time. I think I went past 10, and then ended up on the figure-8 trail just south of the red hashed out of bounds area. I never saw the snowmobile roads at all. Took me a bit to figure out where those buildings had come from, but then I recognized the figure-8 field from the sprint yesterday, and headed down into the control from there.

7-10 were fine, all the trails were gone except for the straightest route which was skied in, so I mostly followed along on that one. Going to 11 I figured if I just recreated however I got to the figure-8 field from 6 I'd be most of the way there, so I did that, crossed the road, and hit it from above. 12 seemed like an easy run down the big trails, but all the big trails looked like little trails, except the ones that nobody had been on, those looked invisible. Got way more confused there than I should have, but eventually ended up on the big trail going into the map exchange, behind a really slow spanish woman who was snowplowing really slowly. Every time I thought I could squeeze past her to get around she would very slowly snowplow back in front of me. Then she skied really slowly through the men's map exchange lane (she was going to the finish). grr.

Map two, first control was easy, then out to the big trail and a long slog uphill and across the contour into the control. Went high to the next one up the big trail and then down through the field with the houses, the first left then cut through to the trail with the control. Down, west, down, east, down into the next one, which I did probably more carefully than I needed to but I didn't want to blow it and drop down too far somehow, since that was getting dangerously close to the part of the map where the trails were all gone. Down across the figure-8 field and the road, then carefully down the big trails, double counting all the junctions, since I knew I got totally mixed up last map and had to actually find a control in there somewhere this time. Straightish on the little stuff down to the map exchange control, where I almost whacked the telephone pole just before the last big trail, recovered from that and immediately went over a three foot drop into the ditch after it. My bad. Stayed on my feet with style worthy of the tv cameras that were hopefully not watching, and down to the control and over the bridge.

So not a great day. The weather wasn't so great, and you had to pay really close attention on the downhills to read the terrain since not all the mapped trails were obvious, and often times looked just like the random cuts people were making. So I blew it on the map reading concentration a few times, since I think I was spending so much effort and time reading the terrain looking for trails. This also took away from looking ahead where I was skiing, which made me blow through tight turns and crash more frequently. Also not looking ahead in the terrain as far probably didn't help the map reading since I wasn't matching up or anticipating junctions as far ahead at all.

C • And again, nicely done! De... 11

ski-woc sprint
Good race. Nice and sunny for everybody else before me, with a bit of a snowstorm while I was warming up. The warmup tracks aren't really near the start, so right before the start all you could do was run around a sloppy parking lot in the snow and get cold, which was pretty fun. Took my full 15 seconds after I got the map trying to figure out where to snap it into the holder so I didn't snap through any important tracks, which wasn't really possible since the course covered the whole thing. I managed to tilt it and snap through the ghetto inset map part, figuring the best I could do was to move the map later and hoped the part hanging out wouldn't disappear in the snow before I got there.

Did the first two controls entirely on the big trails, so I could catch up with the map reading, plus the trails aren't really hard enough for me to dp up anything too strongly. If you hit them just right its ok, but then you'll randomly punch through and just stall, which was pretty frustrating and not so fast. Everything else was pretty straightforward. I came off the figure-8 going to 3 on the lower trail instead of the upper one, but that was only a little extra distance. 3-4 was a fast downhill on the narrow stuff to the western big trail. 5-6 was the snowmobile road all the way up. 6-7 I went high back through 3. 8-9 was significantly steeper and crazier than it looks on the map. Bailed on the sharp bend just before 10, the corner was pretty soft out in the sun. Didn't die going down the bridge-of-death across the road, and even made the corner at the bottom, though barely.

map. no gps tracks, because we're not allowed to carry any gpses, even screenless loggers. the reason given was that we're going to ski around all the tracks, come home and overlay them onto a contour map to make our own ski-o map, then use that to train for tomorrow. because thats easier than downloading the map from the live gps website.

model event
Hey look I broke something. 20m out of the start the last remnants of my pole strap ripped in half. I was actually fairly convinced I'd broken everything fragile on the straps already, but I guess I should add 3/8" webbing to that list now. Is Leki a french company?

Anyway the model was pretty good, the trails weren't as awesome as last week in Mora, you could pole through the bottom of them, and there were lots of crazy downhills without runouts. But the off trail stuff was a little better though, you can't pole and you sink in a bit, but its more solid than last week. Touch free emit is still awesome. Model map. We also got them in 1:10 and 1:15, which was tiny.

C • Track symbols 5

Boiled the handles off the backup poles, and switched them over to the Leki's. The poles and baskets are actually good, its just the handles and straps that are the worst idea ever conceived and then poorly executed. Went across the road to test them out to see if they'd last at least five minutes. Snow was sloppy and wet and slow by now, and there was a crazy wind out in the open field.

20-27 ski woc sweden

Rest day.
Drove from Mora up to Tänndalen with one of the instructors from the ski-o school, who's also a controller up here for ski-woc. Its pretty sweet here, the snow looks good, and dinner was yummy. Got all settled in our swanky room and then spent the rest of the afternoon inside hiding from the satellites.

C • enjoy! 2