Training Log Archive: W

I tells ya, yesterday's race meant I could barely lift my arms above my head. But, I headed over to Goldbar to get in a classic ski before the race and then do a little heckling before working at the shop. The conditions were mostly good, having an entire track down the woodcutters hill was amazing, the improvements to the trails there really really make a difference. That may be the first time in a long, long time that the grooming was good enough to stay in the track the entire way down.

Out of concern for falling extra behind, I'm going to have to resume current logging while catching up on backlogging.

The Sunday I got back from NZ, instead of going to the T-wat for a 30k, I instead decided to get Gastroenteritis and spent most of the day vomiting my guts out until going to the ER to get some liquid awesome put directly into my veins.

Needless to say this put a damper on my training for an entire week, since I didn't actually eat anything until Thursday. I'm disappointed to say I lost almost no weight in this bout. Very disappointing.

Anyway, as I got better, my disappointment in missing the 30k meant I stupidly decided to sign up for the 15k skate at the Alberta Cup in Edmonton. Most fundamentally, this meant 3 climbs out of the river valley up esso hill, which is a remarkably painful hill that just climbs straight up. You can almost see the top from the bottom, and its a long, long way away.

Although my skis felt relatively fast during the warm-up, the snow started to fall as we were getting ready for the start, and progressively over the 15k my skis got worse, and worse and significantly worse.

To be fair, I was pretty bad too. First time on skis in a month and a half, and first exercise since my illness meant I didn't really have a heck of a lot of power to go off. I got reeled in by the real skiers towards the end of the second/third lap, and although I gained almost the 30 seconds on Paul in front of me, he almost pulled it all back in the last 4k when my skis slowed to a crawl.

Probably not the best decision to race, and definitely not great conditions for a personal good performance. However, I beat Paul in the showdown for not last place, so that's a relief. And I was quite pleased about how my climbing felt up Esso hill, since I'm pretty sure it wasn't my shape, I'm going to chalk it up to putting wedges on my skis before the race. I actually do think they made a difference!

I'm back. Time to catch up on a month of back-logging and ranting about this and that. And ho boy do I have a lot to rant about.

I'll get there eventually.

C • Ranting... 3