Training Log Archive: biggins

Event: Sierra Ski-O RG/ASC
 

Setting controls for ski-o at RG. Nice and speedy snow, but already warming.

By the time we got everybody out and anyone back to run timing it was already a pleasant 65 degrees, which made lounging in the sun at the start very awesome, but not so good for skiing. So I skipped racing, because it was going to be a mush fest and my butt still felt broken from the long ski yesterday and this morning. But that meant I got to go pick up the far controls, which involved double poling downhill.

Gipsing trails at Royal Gorge. Warm and toasty out, but still fast for the first two hours. I get such a love/hate relationship every time I ski around this place. Its easily the bestest ski-o terrain around for a multiday event, with a giant (full page 1:15000) area of flatish rolling open forest, with big trails here and there to anchor things, but infinite amounts of rolling patchy forest to set snowmobile trails through. If I had a dream event to organize, it would be a week of ski-o champs at RG, with a solid 15' base, my snowmobile and a weeks worth of gas, and all the logistics and cooperation of Presque Isle.

C • why the hate? 2

Today's not-really-orienteering game is Walden. It's an FPS for "experimental game players to lovers of Thoreau and Transcendental literature". Can't say I'm going to try it, but if you're into Thoreau or just wandering around a computer forest it might be worth a look.

Shuffle along the bike path, which hadn't been plowed since Sunday's dump, but had melted a fair bit in some places. Didn't feel great, but I don't think I broke myself more.

Snowshoeing some little trails into ASC for this weekend. There's enough snow there that we can actually get through the woods this year without getting stuck on giant boulders.

Been sick for a few days, also my broken butt hurts.

C • Try this 3

Oy. Great Ski Race. Forecast for last night was 24" of snow between 10pm and race start, and we got every bit of that and more. The 12k climb at the start was about 2" of powder at the beginning (because the groomer had just come back), to a solid 8" or so up on the pass. It was all kinds of slow and miserable. Also windy whiteouts, where you could sometimes see people in front of you, or sometimes see their drifted over tracks (in the 200m since they passed), but usually not both. The powder got even deeper on the downhill (over my boots), but everybody in front had double poled a track straight down the middle, so it was actually pretty fast. Passed lots of people who shuffled by my powder flailing on the climb up. Then 10k of flat double pole in the leader-set track, which I was rocking, then I passed the groomer coming backward at about 25k and could skate-ish the end. Until 28k, when I caught a tip and ripped my left ski off, via what used to be the weak sauce binding. Then I kick-skied the last 1.5k to the finish on one ski, and had a pretty fabulous one legged decent down the wicked steep finish hill. Finished 31st, even after burning 5 or 6 places on one ski at the end. Good times.

Then we drove home, and on an icy downhill in town came on two cars crashed in front of us, so Bill (driving) slid his truck ever so gracefully into the snowbank to stop. I got out to see if I could help dig out the crashed people, slipped on my ass and wrecked my tailbone, then stopped helping. We got chain towed back up the hill by a big front loader, drove home, then I slipped on my ass on our driveway and wrecked my tailbone and my arm. I was even joking that it was going to be safer to ski down the driveway, except that I only had one ski left. I shouldn't go outside. Good times.

C • All kinds of ridiculousness 6