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!
Comment [1]
Return of the Blog
· Mar 2, 08:40 PM
As you may have guessed, I haven’t had much to say on the skiing or ski racing front for the last few weeks, so I haven’t bothered. The Owl Creek Chase was as hard and bad a race as I’ve had in a long time and I was pretty much ready to call off the season at that point. Well, really what I wanted to do was to hit reset, but the reset button takes 6-8 weeks and that would have left me in a good position to get ready for the last races of the year right about April 1 … just after the last races of the year. So instead, I’m in a bit of a holding pattern. Sort of reset, but mostly trying to give me the best chance possible to be fast in March.
A large part of the plan has been trying to get recovered, because my biggest problem this season has been recovery. Usually I like the second day of two-day weekends, or the second weekend of race series. Not this year. After floating a lot of possible explanations all season through January, the best one we (the collective group I’m analyzing training and racing with) can come up with is that I overdid it a little this summer and fall. Not overdone a lot I don’t think, but just enough so that every time I get a few solid workouts in and feel like I should be getting myself ready for a good string of racing I end up tired with no go instead.
Since Owl Creek I’ve been on the hour and a half a day/one intensity a week plan. It’s hard to say if it’s working. The Birkie was definitely interesting. Much slower pace than last time I skied it, and we brought a pack of 30 up to about 30k. It was a real mess skiing out there. Broken poles, people skiing like donkeys, impossible to move in the pack and all that. Basically everyone was waiting on Babikov, and it took him three tries to get clear, but he finally did. I was great until about 38k, then my triceps started to spasm. I skied the long gradual uphill to Bitch Hill basically legs only, drank my entire third feed, and then had to hammer over Bitch Hill. At that point my arms stopped seizing, but I’d shot my legs too, so the last 10ks were a matter of faking it. I made the cut for 2-9 when Babikov went, but it came back together on the lake and I had no game in the sprint. I kept telling myself I should be going faster, but just couldn’t do it.
I did my first post-Birkie intensity today, classic intervals. I haven’t gone hard on classic skis since the race in Aspen 3.5 weeks ago, and I didn’t feel real comfortable out there. Given that there are 3.5 classic races out of 5 in the second half of the month I’d best fix that I think. My legs are pretty tired now and I feel like I went hard. The idea is to take tomorrow off and hopefully bounce back well enough for a light speed day on Thursday. If that all goes well then I think a TT Sunday or Monday, another speed session before Canadian Nationals and then truly race and rest.
We’ll see how it goes, sure would be nice to finish with something decent.
Comment [1]
Ski Town, USA
· Feb 8, 08:24 PM
Between getting back from the midwest, going to the Boulder and now being in Aspen for the Owl Creek I’ve had a whole three days at home in between the last three trips. Traveling is easier when I’m on the road longer and at home longer. Being back in Bend for just enough time to do laundry and decide not to buy groceries is not really that sweet. But the racing is still fun (usually).
Comment [2]
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.
Comment [1]
Winter Sport
· Jan 17, 07:30 AM
I got this at 10:33 last night – apparently the thought of cold weather was too much.
The Jury and Competition Committee of the CXC Mt Itasca SuperTour/CCSA/MW JOQ/HS/Citizen races scheduled to be held this weekend, January 19-20 in Coleraine, MN, regret to announce that the races have been cancelled due to extreme cold weather. Athletes registered for these races will receive a mailed check to refund entry fees less $5 to cover existing expenses.
Sorry, but the “it might be too cold to race in three days so we’re not even going to try” excuse doesn’t fly very well around here. The forecasts are unchanged from last night. Saturday is iffy and Sunday should be cold but legal.
Not impressed.
Comment [8]
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.
Comment [1]