ski-o! 1:35:23 [3] 16.78 km (5:41 / km) +312m 5:12 / km
shoes: 13 fischer rcr ski-o (109)
World Masters long course.
Well this wasn't very much fun. There's not a lot of snow in the woods, a couple inches, and the sticks and logs and roots and rocks are definitely taller than that. Everything in the woods was dirty and crazy with pine roots and branches and little stumps, some of which I assume are still embedded in my skis.
Bailed hard on some gravel about 200m out of the start. Fell straight forward on my chest onto the icy gravelly trail, broke a map holder strap (but nothing else!), bruised up my ribs and knees and sensitive boy parts. In proper Finnish fashion, as I'm lying on the ground rolling around and moaning a little, the other 10 people from my start wave ski by and don't even look at me.
But after that everything went fine-ish. I was wimping down some of the hairy stuff in the woods for fear of breaking more things, and was wimping up some of the double poles because of the sore ribs. There really weren't that many trails on the map, so navigation was easy, it was just the not dying part that made it tough.
Sigh. I was all psyched up because I had heard fabulous things about finnish ski-o, and this was just disappointing. The conditions were crap which they obviously can't control, but I don't think they handled it very well. The next couple days are on different terrain, so hopefully it'll be better.