Training Log Archive: 'Bent

CNYO Snowgaine day 1. with Bash.
We drove down the day before in stupid-heavy snow from the 1000 islands on, and met the big Canadian contingent for dinner.

Day 1 started with deep snow, and really cold. Bash and I decided to ski day 1 and got changed. We got the maps 30 min before the start, and then decided to snowshoe as many controls were in deep gullies, river crossings, etc. I got cold feet re-changing back to snowshoe eqpt.

Bash has been dealing with a heel injury so we didn't plan a ton of running, and planned to go South but drop a couple of controls.

Right off the start I found my Silva wrist compass froze up, and my chest map board holder broke. (Luckily I had a neck-strap map case). Other than that it was great snowshoeing in winter wonderland, and we warmed up well.

We had a good day out- The plan was ambitious but good, and other than one false start to a control where we had to backtrack, and another we missed due to a map fold and had to double back thing went well. We made it all the way down to the bottom of the map where we ran without snowshoes. I found I had a broken snowshoe binding strap but always carry repair stuff.
We ran the snowshoe trails but mostly stomped in the bush.
We headed back up, got our whole plan done and made it in with a few min to spare. Tiring day but a good one.

Team Canada mostly had a very good day but poor Wokitoki fell into a river and looked pretty rough.

Nice Winter Wonderland ski in fresh powder. Last night's tracks are gone!
I love my commute.

High winds forecast for the afternoon- may need to catch a ride home, but still worth it.

Workout 1 and rehab

Snowmaggedon so far only dropped 2 cm of light fluff over hardpack, with ice in some spots and treacherous breakable crust early on, where it was a bit tricky to skijor with the enthusiastic Bazingadog.

Much better night ski home on fresh powder. Skis were quick!

Drove Adventuredog to work. Poor little guy- his shoulder/ elbow is worse and he can't run to work or even hike.
Xrays are OK, so some sort of soft tissue injury.

Crusty run in and slushy run home with the big guy on his long line.

Workout 3 and rehab.

I took the big guy for his pre-birthday snowshoe bushwhack. As always, I let Bazingadog take the wheel, and saw a whole series of parallel trails where the wild things are. Warm sunny day but still lots of snow in the bush.

He was full of beans for the first hour, but pretty much done in the last 20 min.

Hockleycrest with Bash. Crusty, groomed but not track set, but still nice after spending much of the day in the city.

Workout 2, rehab and some lumberjack.

Gorgeous bluebird day out.
The trail on our property was tough going, even on my snowshoe tracks from a previous day’s attempts to pack it down.
Once I got to the conservation area it improved to fair, then good on the main trail, then excellent on well packed Palgrave East.
I did a mix of single and double track. Great ride!

Back out with snowshoes to break down some more crust-over-soft-snow, hoping it will consolidate into a wider track.

Run in with the big boy back on his e-collar and long line. He was excellent!

Workout 1, plus rehab and a little core, some lumberjack and shovelling.

Neck was sore from biking on Sunday.

Ski in with AD. Fast and crusty out, but the tracks refroze a touch narrower than my skis, so slow and hard work when it wasn't fast on downhills.
May be time to get the spikes or studded tires back out tomorrow.

Icy night ski home.

Drizzly ski in with the big boy. Got a bit of extra in.
Fast ski home- Bazingadog was on a mission.

Scenic with Gally, on last year’s Ski-o map.
Fast conditions.

Bash and I have been curious about the Highlands groomed fat bike trails, so we rented Fat bikes.

The lower trails in the cedars were really nice riding. Once we got higher up into switchbacks that had blown in with new soft snow it became a gong show. If you got anywhere near the side of the groomed track, the bike bogged down even with huge 4.6 x 27.5” tires. When you tried to put a foot down you just postholed in and toppled over like a turtle on its back, which happened quite a few times.

We ended up hike-a-bikeing a lot of the soft stuff, and judging by all the post-hole prints and full-body holes we weren’t alone.

I had gone clipless with my winter biking boots which iced up and wouldn’t clip in, and I took a pretty good beating on some sections. Dunno how you guys ride up high like that, hunched over. I definitely felt my neck after a while, even with an extra-high stem.

Mid way through we hit a wonderful trail in a cedar section that was just magic. Other parts of the woods were excellent too, in full wnter glory, then we hit the soft stuff again. Bash seemed to get the hang of it, and was riding better than me by the end.

The ride out was great, until I clipped a tree with my hand on the bar and went down again hard.

The bikes would have been consistent fun on doubletrack, but fairly narrow and twisty singletrack was tricky in soft conditons. I’d try it again on a firmer day.

Kolapore with Bash. Another fantastic Ontario Backcountry ski.

Powder over a fairly fast crust made for some great downhills, especially the dreaded Gulch, which might be the toughest hill on any trail system I’ve skied in Ontario. Gusty winds made it feel like real winter!
Kolapore church to the cabin, then Dhaulagiri, county forest via JP and back on Kingsway.

Highlands sunset ski with Bash before their Valentine’s day buffet. Chilly, but I had both amazing grip and good glide. Ate too much after....

Commute with AD in excellent ski conditions.

I knew the first part of the ride would be tough in soft snow over breakable crust. Sold bike-shoving and a bit of granny gear riding in the first km, but once I hit the main trail it was fine, as long as I didn't drift off the packed trail. Extra loops of doubletrack in Palgrave East.
BZdog took it in stride, with a few good powdery bains-de-neige.

Night commute, spilt between decent riding in the middle and unrideable shove-a-bike in 20cm deep post-hole snow at the start and final km.

Breaking trail in wet snow with AD. Winter wonderland - I love my commute.

Stars WAR with Hammer.
Despite all the snow in Loree yesterday we decided to run in shoes.
We decided to drop 2 early controls, then basically leapfrogged MBR thanks to Hammer’s pinpoint nav until WT (Bob and Luca) passed us a few controls in. We were ahead of schedule at our half way mark, and added some extra higher value controls in the steep hilly SW. We saw MBR one last time there, before they dropped us.

We executed our plan well, dropped 2 low value controls near the end and finished with 2 min to spare. We ended up 3rd overall (1st masters). WT cleared the course with 30 min to spare!
Bash and Browner won female too.

Nice course by Nick. Good to race with Hammer, and I felt like I was on the map pretty well this time.

C • Stars WAR 3

Fantastic snowshoe with the whole fam in Loree. Deep pow, bluebird sky, no wind, steep hills- love it!

Woo-hoo, powder out the door. Beautiful 2-dog tour of Palgrave West in primo conditions.

A bit of fresh pow made for an excellent ski with the big boy. Palgrave West feels like it’s track-set now. I love my commute...

Workout 1 plus rehab, and some tricky wood splitting.

Commute+ with adventuredog.
Challenging conditions on refrozen icy trails. I wimped out and took off my skis for some of the tricky singletrack downhills.

Night luge run home. Actually, Palgrave West had glazed/icy tracks which weren’t too bad. Palgrave East was frozen hard and flat- would have been better biking with studs.

Ski in on skin skis in soft snow. Slow, but Glide liquid worked.
Glazed on the way home so faster.
Heard 2 sets of coyotes, but Bazingadog didn’t care.

C • any red fox? 2

Kolapore with Bash.
We started at the SW entrance, down Kingsway, over to Southern Crossing and back.
Gorgeous conditions- narrow trails between snow-laden cedars and spectacular hardwoods.

I use my skin skis, which unfortunately bricked up horribly and I probably took them off to scrape them 20 times. Still a nice day for a tour.

Next time- bring glide liquid!

Highlands. Full-on winter. My wax was a bit light on grip, but lots of glide.
Skied everything and a bit of repeat.