Training Log Archive: biggins

Yay cold sunny weather! Warmups and general shenanigans while the ladies were relaying.

Ski-WOC Men's relay leg 2. Good race, good conditions. Tracks were cold and solid, a few insane bottom ditches on the downhills, and lots of crazy 90 degree turns, but I managed to stay upright for all of them and didn't fall off any dodgy mini-bridges into any rivers. They had gps tracking for everybody, which was pretty cool. No maps, since they're being all secretive about it, but you can just overlay it on the one I drew from memory, since its totally correct. Except for the part where I'm a little biased towards drawing right turns, so the straight trail going into 8 should be pointing directly back at the finish. See the amended inset map.

Had three mistakes, one at the end where I ended up on the wrong fork of a Y, but they both went where I was going so no time lost there. The first was coming down the hill from 5-6 on the big trail that mostly went right to the control, but I got out of control and bailed onto a side trail, which meant I had to zigzag a little to get down to the control. It was all downhill though, so probably only a few seconds. The third toward the end out of 15 where I missed the turn I wanted - saw it coming but too late to get the weight shifted enough to make a 90 degree downhill turn, so I kept going and looped below the biathlon range on a big trail. It was longer but faster skiing and less climb, so not sure how the time worked out.

Everything else was totally clean navigation and mostly clean skiing (a few sketchy turns and downhills, but nothing I bailed on). So I'll chalk that up a successful race. Feels good after the junk we had for the middle. Scott and Adrian also had pretty clean races, and we ended up a little behind Japan and a bit ahead of Germany in the fight for the third-world-ski-o championships.

Morning jog with Scott. Temps dropped a lot overnight, things froze, and we got a couple inches of snow, so they should be able to get the tracks back into fine shape. Things are looking good for the next two days.

quickie warmup ski around the stadium to make sure I was soaked by the start.

Ski-WOC middle distance
Well it was raining. All night and all morning. Except when it was pouring. And windy. I was out on Alex's balcony brushing skis in the morning and saw a 50ft pine tree get blown over in the wind, and thought that was crazy. Then during the race I heard one fall over in the woods somewhere and thought it was crazier. Then one fell over on the trail 20 ft behind me and I just about crapped myself. In total I heard 5 fall nearby during the race, climbed over 10-15 that were already down on the trails (a couple of which required taking off the skis, one of which was the one they hung the control on), and spent a lot of quality time on the ground. It was 40-some degrees, pouring the whole race, and the trails were absolute crap. I had first start group, so I was making first tracks for about the first half of my race, though given the number of trees actively falling I probably had fewer of those to go over/around. I couldn't pole at all in the soft stuff, and did get really frustrated at it a couple times, which doesn't help, so attitude fail there. Made a bunch of stupid route choices trying to avoid narrow climbs, but in the end they probably weren't much better, so also fail there. Ran smack into a fallen tree that was across the trail in the bottom of a downhill gully and got a good bruise across my waist, saw it coming but there was nowhere to go so I just crouched down and hugged it so it didn't take out my knees. Also fell spectacularly after stumbling on the fluffy tops of another fallen tree, which kind of hurt my shoulder. It still works and all, but it's sore and the arm is doing its tingly thing, which I haven't had the pleasure of since wrestling. So a few injury fails as well. But hey I didn't break any skis!

Sprint relay tomorrow, Ali and Scott. Scott and I were basically tied for it, so we just flipped a coin. Which I'm fine with since the conditions look to be just as crappy tomorrow, and Scott is lighter so has more of a chance of poling than I do. Plus I won't complain about an extra day for the various bits to heal.

C • Major frustration! 7

Its morning o'clock, and has been dumping snow for a couple hours. This is good, because the other option was dumping rain, and this means it's sort of close to freezing (like 34 or so). No idea how the tracks are, as everything is embargoed, but they're out grooming. We've spent the morning between various stages of waxing, panic waxing, eating porridge, and snorting flouros. Team mood: psyched.

C • awesome 5

C • Good race! 3

warmup, and then more warmup. starts were delayed by an hour because the bus from the other accomodation took 1h40 to get here instead of 30 mins.

Ski-WOC sprint!
Map is up for the moment at the gps tracking site, but they say that might disappear in a bit until the end of the week.

Good race, tracks were soft, but better than yesterday, and I felt good skiing for the most part. I had a couple routes I could have done better, but I made all the decisions quickly and didn't mess anything up in the execution, which was good. Took an out of the way big-trail route in the middle from 8-9 because I started getting ahead of myself and also pissed at the trails, but that let me reset the brain and start reading ahead again.

cooldown in the finish field waiting for quarantine to end.

and then for afternoon nap time training we tried to redraw the map from today, from memory, before we'd seen the race maps again. I'll post pictures once I take them, but I got probably half the map mostly-correct and half of it dodgy-correct.

edit: map and greg map

C • Photorealistic 1

C • /b/ 2

boys team morning jog

Model event. Skied around to the couple controls, then a lap up around a big trail loop to see what the hillside looked like, then some more controls. Its like 40 degrees, rained a whole lot yesterday, and didn't get even close to freezing last night, so the trails are so soft they're basically not trails. Though they're better than the parts that aren't supposed to be trails, which are impassable. So the race goal for tomorrow is to not get frustrated with how much the trails suck. That is all.

Also yesterday's bus from the airport in Ust got stuck in the slush on the road, so the teams that arrived yesterday never got here and slept the night in the bus on the highway before getting dug out this morning.

C • Go Biggins! 2

Back to the same training map as yesterday, but this time with more raining and +8 degree temps. Drew a random course of a bunch of controls, skied it, skied it backwards, then traded maps with scott and skied his course, then skied around the outside of the map. It was sortof drizzling for most of it, then it started raining when we were done, then it started pouring once we got home. Boo. Its switched back to snow by dinner time, but not really convincingly.

C • Glad you all made it to the... 2