Training Log Archive: biggins

warmup around the ice fest of a warmup loop.

Ski-WOC Middle race
Not a bad race, other than some fairly epic weather conditions. It got up to about 40 degrees overnight, then dropped to 20 by the time the race started. So everything had an inch of not-quite-greg-supporting crust on it. The course started up out of the arena into the golf course, then cut left and went straight down the super steep wall that we came up on the long course. It was ok for me since I was only about the 20th guy out, but by the time the women got there later in the day apparently it was a 100m tall sheet of ice. The we had a couple controls down in the ditchy maze area, which was pretty fun since it was gradually downhill and fast. Out around the farm fields at the far end, where I started having some trouble reading the trails vs contours, and made one mistake dropping down a reentrant when I should have been climbing up a ridge. Lost a minute or two there, but dragged a Czech guy down with me so I guess it was ok. Then back into the fields for a couple easy ones, and then we turned around and started heading back up the valley. Hadn't really noticed it coming down, but it was wicked windy out in the fields, and trying to ski across them was interesting when your poles get blown sideways and you can't see the 1m trails since they've been totally windblown over. Somewhere out in the fields I punched through the crust with my left pole really hard and ripped the basket clean off, so I was left with just a bare stick. That didn't help so much.

Back up through the fields a bit, where I made another contour mistake and climbed over a ridge I think I could have gone around, then back up towards the ditchy maze part. Had a couple controls in there that were easy to find, just hard to get to with one pole. Not sure how much it was really slowing me down, it worked fine as long as I was on the groomed trails (not that I could see them anyway) but once I wandered off into the crust I couldn't really use that pole.

Instead of heading back up the wall of death, they had groomed a new trail up a ridgeline to the top of the golf courses, which I think they managed to get in a couple extra contours, so that one might have been pushing 20+. It went ok until about halfway up where we got into the full brunt of the wind, and then I just started freezing. The wind was blowing so hard I was afraid it would rip open the map holder and lose the map (gee thats never happened before...). Up on the top of the golf courses and we had a couple controls in a mostly straight line down to the finish, but it was now windy and snowing, so visibility was down to 50m or so. No big problems other than trying to ski downhill and getting stopped by the wind, and then into the finish.

Although I guess in retrospect the weather for the mens race wasn't actually that bad. After running home to shower and warm up, I went back out for the women's race. It was even windier and snowing pretty consistently, to the point where often from the -3min callup line you couldn't see the actual start line. Must have been fun to be out there trying to race in that. All our women finished though, despite sending the search parties out to look for Candice after the weather got worse and she was out an hour later than everybody else.

Long + Middle day photos

rest day. Fixed up my skis so I have two working pairs again, then Alex and I went over to the model map across the street to ski around a bit. Warm and snowing, with lots of wind. Generally pretty miserable. Turning to sleet by the end.

warmup

Ski-WOC Long race (aka Equipment Disaster)
I guess the good news is that the ghetto pole baskets worked great! But everything else wasn't so good. Right out of the mass start we got to double pole uphill for a bit, then ski uphill on one of two soft 3m trails up the fairway of a golf course. A little bit through some woods (also uphill) then across the main road and back into the woods for a final climb into the control. Definitely more than 1km on the first leg, all uphill. By this point just about everyone else had ditched me so I was all by my lonesome self. The 2nd was another km+ away, but out on the other side of the map most of the way down a ridge (but not all the way), so I could either go back out to the main road and down the valley then climb up to the control, or climb out of #1 up to the ridgetop then down along the ridge into the control. I chose to go up first, since it looked to be a few contours less (6 vs 10 or something) and I really didn't want to be climbing on a 1m trail when the main pack was coming down it. So down the ridgeline was super fun, it was a snowmobile trail that weaved right along the top of the ridge in and out of the trees, but was downhill enough to be just on the edge of control. Got the control and down onto the main road ok, and went by the Romanian guy climbing up into it, which was a surprise since I though he was faster than that. Dropped down in to a fairly flat mixed field/wooded section (like a bunch of small farm fields) that I tried to cut straight through. Got a little mixed up counting fields and burned some time with a few bad micro-route choices, and stumbled into the control area about the same time as the Romanian guy (different fork though). Easy leg up to the equipment control (quick mental note of where our bag was, should that be needed later... ha), then a long gentle uphill section through a maze of stream gullies and ditches, all on narrow trails. The woods were open enough, and there were so many trails everywhere, that I actually didn't look at the map much, but instead just kept taking the trail forks that went generally in the correct direction. Worked remarkably well, got the control and got out of the maze to the base of the hillside that led back up to the golf courses (start area). Not wanting to get too creative, they had just groomed two parallel 3m trails straight up the wicked steep hill (16 contours) that you got to slog up. Another control at the top that took way too long since there was no oxygen in my brain, then down to the start for the first map exchange.

Second map was roughly the same layout as the first, except that my first control was on top of the ridge to start with, so I didn't have to drop down then climb back up, so it made it quite a bit easier. Got about halfway down the crazy ridge when I dropped down a pretty steep section in a hard snowplow, heard a pop, then looked down at my feet and noticed that I only had one ski on. It took a split second to register that this was a bad thing, then I caught the toe of my boot and did a fairly impressive wipeout into some fluff/trees. Thankfully more fluff than trees. The best that I can figure out, I hit a bump with the snowplow, actually flexed the middle of the ski (under the NIS binding plate) and snapped off the tail of the binding. I was pretty close to the bottom at this point, so after climbing back up to dig out the pieces of my toys, I stuffed the busted parts in the tights and slid on my butt down to a saddle on the ridge. I actually managed to fit the binding back onto the NIS plate, but it only had about half the support length that its supposed to, so if I torqued it at all (ie snowplow) it would pop right off. Fortunately there was a 3m road dropping down from the saddle to the main road, it was going the wrong direction, but there was no chance I would make it on the narrow stuff. So I went down that with the busted ski straight and snowplowing with the other one, and managed to hit the main road only slightly out of control. Down the road to the next control (which was fortunately only one contour up off the road), then the leg down through the farm fields. I didn't want to try weaving between the fields with the busted ski, so I went back up the main road a bit and down a 6m road and came in from the other side. Much easier, and I probably should have done that on the first lap too. Then up to the equipment control, swapped out the busted ski with the spare, which was pretty awesome since I was now on one blue 160 and one red 193. I think thats a fashon faux pas. Anyway it took a bit to figure out how to ski off balance like that, but it worked and I got up through the uphill ditchy maze and back up the insane steep wall of death and into the map exchange.

Third map was about the same layout as the first two: long climb up the golf course and woods to the first one, then a wicked crazy windy decent down the ridge to #2. Coming out of two onto the main road before the farm fields I was coming down a little field mildly out of control, it was snowing a bit so I couldn't really see, and the track was all torn up and choppy. So I didn't see the steep little step right before it jumped up on the road, hit it straight on full speed, and cracked the tail of the big red 193, just behind the tail plate. Since this sounded so familiar, I already knew the route around the farm fields on the 6m road, so I took that around to the next two controls into the equipment control. The guy manning the gear control, who remembered me from last lap since it looked like I was the only one that got into the bags, was just sitting around bored out of his mind since the main pack already passed half an hour ahead of me. So I skiied by and flexed up the tail of my second busted ski and he just started cracking up. I couldn't swap out skis since the one in the bag was now the busted 160 from lap two, and the busted 193 was more skiable (actually not that bad, just a little soft and dragging where it splintered). On the third lap the course had a long leg straight from the equipment control to the top of the wall, no control down in the ditchy maze, so it opened up a new route around the wall on a longer (but presumably skiable) 3m road. I figured that with my busted tail I couldn't get much glide anyway, so I went for the wall again, but sounds like Adrian and Neil went around. Adrian saved a couple mins on that leg, but he was skiing faster than me all day so it probably would have been even for him.

So not so good of a race. Even without the busted skis, I felt trashed on the long uphills out of the start, and was mostly terrified on the narrow trail downhills coming down the mountain. But honestly I wasn't expecting too much more, so I guess it turned out average. And at least I only broke skis and not me. Also wow thats a long AP entry.

And it was reminded to me that I never mentioned how great my wax was for the sprint, and that I was completely mistaken for even considering international wax-related sabotage.

C • Well, 4

warmup around the base station, plus up and down the hill to the start a few times.

Ski-WOC Sprint
Not too bad of a race. The terrain was a golf course, so rolling open areas divided by thin forest. The course had 80m of climb, but 130 of decent, and about half of it was on 3m trails, so things happened really really fast. Conditions were sunny and right around freezing, with solid 3m trails and not bad 1m ones.

First leg ran down a 3m trail for a bit then cut through some narrow stuff to another 3m trail. I nailed the cut through, both with the navigation and with the skiing, but was so happy it went well that I missed a turn right after it. Nothing fatal, it just put me one trail above the control, so I cut down 20m off trail into it. A little shaky from that one, I got halfway through the second leg, making all the correct turns, but started reading my map wrong (thought I was on a parallel 3m trail), and planned the approach to the control wrong. By the time I figured it out I was already even with the control, but two contours downhill on the wrong trail. There was an easy loop back up to the control, but I think I lost quite a few seconds on that one (the Bulgarian guy 1 min behind me passed me into that one). 3-4 was uphill, so I had time to settle down and actually read the map a bit, which was good because 4-5 was the long leg across most of the map (also fast and downhill on 3m trails). 5-6 and 6-7 were uphill again on 1m trails, so no trouble with the navigation, just trying to ski fast. 7-8 was a longer fast downhill mostly on a 3m trail, 8-9 I cut across an uphill field that was a bit soft but skiable, and definitely faster than going around on the trails. Then slogged straight up the monster climb in the finish chute.

So it was an ok run, but it felt sloppy and chaotic, I never really got a handle on the map. Only managed to read ahead once or twice, all the rest of the time I was just struggling to keep up with the current leg. Finished just a few seconds ahead of Adrian, but haven't gotten a chance to compare splits with him yet. Unfortunately they took the maps, and we don't get them back until the end of the week, so by then I'll forget all my routes. Margus of Estonia (previously of Canada) had a good race, ended up two minutes back in 25th, and Olli-Markus (of ski-jwoc gold sweep fame) pulled out a silver. On the women's side, Alex did great and ended up 22nd (2.5mins back), Marie-Cat (of Canada) decided she actually likes this ski-o stuff, Julie skipped a control, and Sharon skiied really really far off the map.

yesterday and today photos

C • damn right I'm loving those... 9

Event: WSOC 2009
 

Quick ski around Model Event area A, which was the same map around the hotel that we've been on for the last couple days, with one new trail groomed. Playing with the new ghetto Emit glove strap I made. Seems like it'll be ok, I just need to switch it around so its the other way up.

Across the road on model map B, which was all narrow trails and super fun. Some short but steep downhills that were borderline out of control, a few step hill climbs that weren't too bad on the short skis, and some shallow climbs that I've finally figured out how to do quickly. Seems like its marathon skate but also some kick double pole in there too. I can do it up the shallow narrow trails and get going pretty fast before I get tired, but it needs a really strong pole plant, so it doesn't work if poles are punching through. And it seems I've started ripping through the plastic on the big baskets, so they flatten out and collapse upward along the pole shaft. So we're now working with some ghetto rope style to keep them in the stronger curved pringle shape. Seems to be working ok for the moment, but I'm a little worried I'm going to rip all the way through the plastic.

Also apparently I got volunteered to be a member of the event Jury. So much for name recognition. Would have been nice if they told me ahead of time though, instead of just letting me read it in bulletin 4. I did get to go to the officials' reception after the opening ceremony, which almost made up for the fact that I also have to sit through the team leaders meetings. Not like I have anything better to do, like waxing or eating or sleeping. Fortunately I enlisted the help of the official Canadian wax chick, so that part was well under control. Unless she sabotaged them... but I guess we'll find out in the Sprint tomorrow.

C • mmmmm.... sabotage huh? yo... 2

A few laps around the amusement park behind the hotel, then some up on the training map, then another lap through the park. There wasn't a bus to Otaki today, so all the teams were out during the day wandering around on the slopes behind the hotel. Neil and Julie and Sue arrived this morning, so the Americans were well represented in our wanderings.

random photos from the first couple days. not sure if I like the new indexer, but ken sent the old one so maybe I'll go back to that one.

C • Trail Conditions? 2

warmup around the start area in Otaki

Training race on the Otaki map. Mostly a ski race with the occasional side trip onto some narrow stuff to punch a control or two (map). So using the flat 160s probably wasn't the greatest choice, but I didn't know that going in. Felt good to just ski hard on the skate trails after a couple days playing on only the ski-o trails. Challenge of the day was to figure out how this emit thing worked with ski gloves and poles. Haven't quite figured out the best way yet.

Easy cooldown ski with Adrian and Jon around the normal ski trails.

Random food of the day. I was expecting purple fruit juice, but it was crystal clear and sortof syrupish.

Random chemistry lesson of the day. Brought to you by Swix Japan.

And finally here's our local volcano. Not smoking, thats just the clouds.

more pics