Canadia!
· Mar 18, 08:43 PM
I’m back. Well, sort of. I think this is my first trip north of the border since I was at Ste-Anne with Dartmouth late 2005, and there will be no visits to the shelf on this trip. Ah well, race season is back and it’s time to go. The drive up took a couple days (we took a little break on the drive up – check out the XC O blog for pics) but we’re here and going now. No pictures from the venue yet, but the sun did come out today, so maybe I’ll get the camera out soon.
Today we had the 10k classic. 3×3.3 on the Olympic Classic trail. A lot of good skiing out there, if good skiing is to be had. Today was not one of those days. I ended up on hairies and they were decent. They weren’t good, but they were fast and they were better than what a lot of people had. I could pretty much run up anything as long as I was out of the track, but I couldn’t really kick the tracks. It was just a tiny bit too bad, because the hills were just barely skiable, so running definitely wasn’t the fastest thing to do out there. But I have to think my skis were above average.
As far as the race went, it wasn’t bad. Wasn’t great, but I haven’t done anything in the last month really (5 weeks if you don’t count the Birkie), so I’ll take it. I started 15 seconds before Robin McKeever and 15 behind Roycroft. (15 second intervals and 3 laps made it feel like roller derby out there on lap one, then it thinned out a little – there might be more of the same tomorrow, I’m not sure sure, no start lists yet). I lost time to Roycroft on the first lap, and McKeever caught me at about 2.5k. I didn’t hang on for two long, but skied a good second lap and stayed close. I pulled Dan back a little and was feeling pretty good for the last lap.
Then McKeever caught Roycroft and they really put the hammer down on last lap and really buried me. I struggled with kick and suffered my way through. My legs were wobbly enough to make me want to get out of my tuck on the second to last downhill, so that was a good sign at least for the effort. I skied the bottom half of the last climb like a champ and the top half not so fast. But, all told it was a real good effort to get out of the way. Here’s hoping for tomorrow!
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A Little Tired
· Jan 29, 08:25 PM
So the weekend came and went without a whole lot of fanfare. 3rd and 5th looks nice, but I was definitely looking for more. After my hard intervals Monday and Wednesday’s sprint race I was pretty sure things were coming together for a very good weekend. I had designs on a couple of wins – well at least the skate race – and was ready to go. Thursday and Friday were easy and ski/wax testing (which was a little tough to do since temps were still down around 0 and it was warming up for the weekend). Then Saturday morning rolled around, and I wasn’t ready to go.
Duluth Sprints
· Jan 24, 09:35 AM
I was sitting in the locker room at the Marshall High School/College of Saint Scholastica Hockey Rink in between the qualifying and heats during last nights sprints with 5 of the other 7 qualifiers. As I listened to the deep hacking coming from most of them, the only thought I could muster was, “did I not go hard enough?” Even with temperatures hovering just below 0, I didn’t manage to push myself hard enough to bring on the post-race hack – at least not after only 2:40. This wasn’t a problem on Monday when I did 2×5k TT efforts at Telemark, so the only explanation I have is that I’m just not good at pushing myself in a sprint – or maybe I just haven’t built the capacities to make that short an effort truly race worthy.
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Classic Day
· Jan 4, 10:27 AM
Well, 30th is not exactly what I’d hoped for, but it didn’t come together for me really at all yesterday. My nasal membranes dried out around 8:00 Wednesday night, and I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night with a very dry nose and mouth. I tried hard to convince myself that I wasn’t getting sick, and lay awake for a few hours focusing a lot of energy on not getting sick. A day later, it’s pretty clear that didn’t work, and the sickness I tried to will away is here. I have a full blown head cold that’s migrated to my throat and my new goal is to keep it out of my lungs. That means definitely no sprint and probably no sprint relay. I told Violett that he might need to find a new partner. If it wasn’t January I’d give it a go – I can probably be okay for a sprint relay – but there’s a lot of season left and I’m looking forward now.
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10 Skate - A few days late
· Jan 4, 09:17 AM
Today was mostly relief for me. After an early season (December) which didn’t go at all according to plan, I’m pretty excited to have gone out and race and come away with a solid result. It might be premature to call today’s race a confirmation of a season’s worth of training, but it’s nice to know I’m capable of skiing better than I did in Bozeman and at Soldier Hollow. I’m ready to put away the doubt that was creeping in and go out and put together a real good race on Thursday. I used to be something of a classic specialist, time to see if I can revive those days.
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Bozeman Sprint - Classic
· Dec 8, 04:54 PM
A few years ago I figured out how to qualify in sprints. It was something about being able to go actually fast over a short distance, and it seemed to be more of a mental thing than anything else. But the last time I was good like that was West Yellowstone – in 2006. Today was not much different. I was 17th in qualifying, but instead of it being the unluckiest (or luckiest depending on your attitude) place, they took 30 through, so I was in safely.
West - Sprint and 15
· Nov 26, 11:51 AM
West Yellowstone has come and gone, by far my shortest ever trip to lovely south-western Montana. This trip is more notable for what I didn’t do (ski into the park or around Windy Ridge, send any postcards, have a tired sixth day at altitude – today would be that sixth day and I’m already in Bozeman – etc.) than what I did. What I did do was show up, try to learn my skis, race a couple of times and then get out and head back (well, I’m on my way back) to Bend.