Snarling Snow

I'm running out of ways to describe the recurring snow conditions at Waterville Valley. Only once this season have I encountered what I consider fast or even average conditions. It is always so freakin cold up there, and they always seem to get a dusting of abrasive snow after they groom. Today the snow snarled with each push of your ski, as if it were retorting "and where do you think you're going!?" No where fast, that's for sure.

Three of us went up, Skogs, Dave and myself. We started together but didn't stay that way very long. I was on a mission. Today was my last major workout before tapering for Lake Placid next weekend. I signed up for the 50k skate race. I wanted to go harder for less duration today. I only wish my harder effort netted a little more speed and distance than usual. It didn't with the slow snow. The boat loads of new snow were groomed out nice though.

We started out just like last weekend, doing the full south end perimeter. I drilled all the climbs. Concerned about imploading too soon, Skogs told me to just go on ahead, don't wait. I went 85 minutes before taking a breather to suck down a Gu at the top of Cascade Brook Trail. Taking Beanbender to get there was killer. I told myself before getting to Beanbender I wasn't going to do it again on sandpaper snow like last week. I did not need to strain hip flexors or a groin muscle. I just can't pass up a punishing climb though. I tricked myself into thinking I could just "soft pedal" it. In 12F sandpaper snow, there is no soft pedaling. For about 7 minutes I averaged 3mph. I was an inch of glide away from herringboning the sucker. I thought to myself I bet I couldn't even ride a mountain bike up it without wheelying over backwards, so skiing up at any speed is probably success.

I came down Cascade then crossed over to Lower Osceola to do the other 800 footer, Tripoli Rd. I met Brad Ek and Brad Sheehan at the bottom. I've skied and bike raced with Ek (NHCC) before but didn't recall ever meeting Sheehan despite the familiar name. Maybe an Exeter ride? A little research shows he rides for and is team director of the Metlife cycling team. Ek and Sheehan happened to be heading up Tripoli also and asked if I wanted to join. They are excellent skiers. Sheehan V2'd all but a few of the steepest bits of the Tripoli climb. I was having trouble V2'ing on the flats in this dry snow. Impressive.

Sticking to my mission of going harder shorter, I called it good after climbing Tripoli and headed back. The sun was working just a tad of glide into Swan's Way back to the Nordic center. Figures now that I was done. Turns out Skogs and Dave didn't ski with each other very long either. Dave did Beanbender and Cascade but not Tripoli. Skogs skipped the biggest climbs altogether and went for some flat land cruising around Moose Run and Wicked Easy. Skiing doesn't afford the luxury of "sitting in" like cycling. Minute differences in fitness or technique are quickly exposed. I don't mind waiting at the tops of climbs on the bike at all for others, but when you are soaked in minimal layers with windchills near zero, waiting on skis isn't a viable option. We each got back to the Nordic center within minutes of the planned rendezvous time. Despite chilly conditions and slow snow, it really was an awesome sunny day to be out in the mountains. 34.8km, 1036m vertical in 2.6hrs for the day.

Dodge Plow

There are few things that scare me while riding. A couple of times, I was out on epic, solo rides in far away places when I ran out of daylight. One of those occasions was in the desert near Tucson and coyotes started gathering around me. At the time, I didn't know they were just "riding" with me and having fun. But past sundown with no light and not near my car, scared I was. Another time was near Pasadena. I underestimated how long a ride would take, ran out of daylight, only to find a bridge across a gorge I absolutely had to cross was missing. I rock scrambled down into the gorge, hiked downstream in the stream a long ways before I found a place I could climb back up on the other side. I got back to my car when it was dark out. I was just a little panicky.

Did you ever play dodge ball when you were a kid? Maybe kids don't play that anymore. Playing dodge with echelons of snowplows can get the adrenaline going better than the kid's game. Not wanting to break with my weekly training regimen of skiing Weston Tuesday night, riding hard Wednesday at lunch, I had no choice but to suck up what Mother Nature dealt me today. Snow was falling at about 2-3" per hour at lunch time before it changed over to rain. It was that dense, not good to to ride in at all kind of snow. I bet it would have been spectacular to skate on.

The side roads were completely unrideable. I tried cell tower hill, but the 4" of new snow over ice didn't work. I spun out before I got to the steep part and turned around. Gaining speed coming down the lower portion of the climb, I realized my tires weren't even really doing anything. They were just skidding along on snow that was sliding on the ice underneath. That unstable situation promptly ejected me into the snow bank. I'm sure when I came to rest, I was completely submersed in powder. Snow found all kinds of ways to infiltrate my layers of clothing. The only good thing was that had to be the softest impact crash I've experienced.

Heading back out to the roads with paved shoulders, I noted Industrial had recently been plowed. Miss number one. Longer Continental Blvd still was not plowed. I did two laps up and over the big hill on Industrial. In that 20 minutes or so, an inch of dense snow fell, enough to make the shoulder hard work. On my second lap, the plows came through Continental. Miss number two. So I did out and back on it before they came through for a clean-up pass. I was constantly looking back. Heading back to the office on Industrial, the plows had not been through again and it was getting tough to ride. Where could they be? Right behind me! You know how they form an echelon, curb to curb? That's what I was faced with. Fortunately a Fidelity entrance was coming up and I darted across to the other side. You have to constantly be looking over your shoulders when riding while it is snowing out. I doubt snowplow operators find spandex clad freaks in their way very humorous. Cyclist? What Cyclist? They'd find me in May when the last of this snow melts.

I managed to ride 80 minutes with around 45 minutes of solid threshold effort mixed in. Amazingly, there was another dude out there in this mess, on a hardtail with neon yellow windshell just like me. Too bad we were going opposite ways with a barrier in between us. I wonder who it was?

Tuesday Night Worlds #4

My sprint race tonight forced me to tap into a dry well. I expected as much. The weekend entailed some pretty serious volume and intensity both on skis and the bike. Normally I do recovery rides at lunch on Mondays. Yesterday I was so beat up I didn't even bother to take a bike to work. 46 year old bones just don't recover the way my 35 year old bones did when I first got into cycling. I pretty much figured one day off was not going to have me in good form by Tuesday. Then again, these Tuesday night gigs are all about learning to go fast on skis, not about results.

I'm now three for four on Rt 128. Four visits to Weston have had me stuck in non-moving traffic due to accidents three times. Don't people know how to drive down there? There hasn't been snow on the roads for over a week. Last week when there were no accidents, it took me 46 minutes to reach Weston from Merrimack. Tonight was nearly double that. Needless to say, I didn't get much of a warmup in tonight.

Course was similar to last week with one additional hairpin turn thrown in and a little bit more climbing. There were many giant moguls created by snow guns to ski over, and the guns were blowing tonight during the race. This was the most technical and most fun course I've skied yet at Weston. It was also the coldest night. My skis were very slow, but I think everyone's were slow. I seemed to hold my place just fine drafting in paceline down the hills. My recently acquired RS:11's performed well.

I started in the 5th row. I think mostly slow guys were behind me, as few to none passed me double poling. I was no more than 14 back once the skating began, my best start to date at Weston. It all went downhill from there. I continued to hemorrhage places the entire race. In the first of two laps, around six guys passed me, including Marv Wang. He was easy to pick out, as we were both wearing IBC colors. I haven't beaten Marv yet but can stay with him. I did my best tonight to shaddow him. On the second lap Jamie Doucett passed me. I followed him to the line last week for a 14th place overall finish. I was struggling tonight though. Just didn't have any punch over the top of each hill. I stayed with the Marv/Jamie group to the finish. I was last guy out of more than 10 in that group to cross the line. I got nipped right at the line by Rene Harde.

My Garmin measured 5.82km with a 17:27 racing time, netting 22/76 overall. That is exactly 20kph, which is a fairly typical speed for me at Weston. It felt a lot slower. Looking at my HR data later, my HR responded nicely at the start and stayed dead flat for the rest of the race. My avg was 169bpm, max only 173bpm.

It's not worth backing down on Sunday to do a little better at Weston on Tuesday. I need the Sunday bike training days. I have a ride planned on Hawaii in early April that might possibly be the hardest ride I've ever done. It will go 97 miles, have 15,000ft of climbing, done with a MTB with knobby tires, mostly paved but good portion of it is rugged, loose 4WD road, and the average altitude will be around 10,000ft, max'ing at nearly 14,000ft on two different summits. It will take over 8hrs riding time to complete. My longest ride so far this year has been 2hrs, and only 4-5hrs per week.

You can't beat Tuesday night at Weston for the cardio training value. That is one reason I go. Another reason is going fast on skis under your own power is quite exhilarating. For a klutz like me, it is no small undertaking to learn how to ski. The learning process itself is highly rewarding. I have much more to learn, and as long as I keep chipping away at technique improvements, skiing will never be boring. I'd like to poke into the top 10 some day at Weston, but I've got a ways to go.

Snow Bikin'

So how do you top off an excellent day on cross country skis? You hit the snow again the next day with wheels. I've been riding my winter beater bike, a Jamis Durango frame built up with odds and ends parts, exclusively for about six weeks now. I've had to replace the rear derailleur cable housing once already. Now I had to replace the whole rear derailleur. It seems the pivot spring (around the screw you bolt it to the hanger with) has disintegrated. I had a really old XTR derailleur in the junk drawer that I decommissioned long ago because it didn't work so well. It works way better than the toasted spring derailleur though.

While my beater bike was up on the stand Sunday, I took my singlespeed out for the first time this winter. It does not have studs. I had hoped to be hitting the Cape each weekend, but the northern half of the country has been in an ice age since early December. It hadn't snowed in a while, so I thought the snowmobile trails would be nicely set up. I drove up to Massabesic Lake to ride. To my horror, there was street parking only with hundreds of trucks with snowmobile trailers there. Hmmm, maybe this was going to be more dangerous than Mass Ave during rush hour.

I started out down the rail trail. The snowmobile clubs groom the trails for snow machines. They stay nicely planarized. You could probably skate ski them quite nicely. But every few minutes, marauding gangs of snowmobilers would come by. Most were cordial. A few knuckleheads would come by 2ft away at 70mph. I wonder how many were actually sober. I could tell there was no getting away from inhaling partially combusted gasoline and motor oil.

New Panasonic LX3 shot. Drastically reduced in pixels and compression from original, but viewed at 100% is still impressive.

I brought my new camera with me. It is a Panasonic LX3, a point and shoot that rivals SLR quality. It is pricey, not high pixel count, but super wide angle and 2x faster lens than most point and shoot cameras. It will be wicked nice for shots from Haleakala in two months. Not two miles into my ride, I hurled myself over the bars and landed hard on my back and camera. I think the camera survived. Shoulder was mighty achy today. It seems if you get too close to the edge of the groomed snowmobile trail, your front tire will punch through and just disappear, as in drop 2ft. Riding the middle of the trail was dicy with all the 50mph sleds going by and it was very soft there from being minced by track spikes.

By the FOMBA mountain biking trails, I caught up to a dog team. This wasn't one of the elite Iditarod Teams you might see training there, but a four dog, mixed breed set pulling a woman. I "drafted" them at about 12-15mph for a few minutes. I was working hard on the mushy surface. When we came to a small hill, I prepared to get dropped. You would expect this following any kind of gas guzzling machine. The operator just requests more kJ from his fossil fuel stores and over he goes. But you know what, dogs must be a lot like humans. They slowed down about as much as I did to get over the rise.

I did a ride over Tower Hill, then down the starting chute of the Watershed Wahoo MTB race course. There were very few snow machines there despite being ride by the Snow Slickers club house. I worked my way around Tower Hill Pond, even riding out to the middle of it on a packed snowmobile track to take some pictures.

Wrapping up, I took a short piece of paved road back to my car. This took me around the rotary just off Exit 1 on Rt 101. Some woman decided my life didn't count for much and exited the rotary as I was continuing around. I narrowly missed piling into her trunk by swerving bike right and counter-balancing my torsel over her trunk has the back of her car whizzed under me. I hadn't had to scream unpleasantries at a motorist in a long time. Customers at the nearby convenience store wondered what my problem was. So much for a pleasant off-road ride.

At least I got an amazing workout out of the ride. My quads were noodly when I finished. I rode 20 miles in about 2hrs, working very hard in mushy conditions most of the time. I suspect had I taken a geared bike, I would have capitulated and found back roads to ride. It would have been too easy to drop to the granny ring, only to not have enough momentum to keep going most of the time. I believe I have a 32x18 on the singlespeed right now, and at <10mph, it was a low cadence, high force workout. Exactly what I needed.

Parity in the Valley

With a full stomach and a fading endorphin buzz, I'm in a writing mood. Settle in for an essay. When I was a kid, my dad wasn't into athletic activities. I never got into stick and ball sports. In fact, later I learned I utterly sucked at them. It could be because my dad never "played catch" with me to develop these parts of my brain. I suspect though, I have a very low kinesthetic IQ. This means I don't have as intricate wiring in my motor cortex as most folks do. It's a catch-22 problem. It's quite possible my dad never played catch with me because I couldn't learn to catch a ball. My dad was and to this day is an avid sportsman. He hunts or fishes almost daily. I went hunting and fishing with my dad many times growing up, but trouncing through the woods or sitting in a boat doesn't exactly build the fine motor skill skate skiing requires.

Fast forward to January 2003. My friend "Skogs" from work convinced me and Steve Gauthier to try out skate skis at Waterville valley. I was already an accomplished MTBer, having won a couple expert field races. I was looking for alternative ways to stay fit over winter, but skate skiing seemed over the top skill-wise. I was very hesitant to head there with Skogs, as he is Norwegian and has been skiing since he was three years old. I remember the day clearly. Conditions were kind of crusty. We rented equipment, got a lesson, then ventured out on our own. I spent more time on the ground cussing than actually moving. I could not figure out the motive force behind those crazy things. Having classic skied a couple times in my life, I was constantly searching for the fish scales for kick. It was no minor miracle that I went back a second time. I fared only slightly better. Going back a third time that winter, I started to get it. I bought skis, poles and boots.

The summer of 2003 I met Brett Rutledge at a hillclimb race. Some how we got on the subject of skate skiing and I mentioned I "skied." We skied a few times that following winter when he convinced me to try a race. This was no ordinary race, this was the infamous Lake Placid Loppet. So here's the deal. Brett had years of skiing with some coaching under his belt. I hadn't even a season's worth yet. Brett had done Lake Placid before and knew what a spanker it was. In fact, in the 1980 winter Olympics, the Russians protested one of the hills in the course because it was too steep. To this day that hill is called "Russian Hill." Brett talked me, a total newbie, into doing this 50km marathon with thousands of feet of climbing. Lake Placid is recognized as being one of the hardest marathons in North America.

The short story is I finished DFL in my category, and nearly DFL for all men and women categories. Brett fractured his ankle in a crash about half way through the race, then finished a full second lap, and still finished half an hour faster than me. I suppose I've spanked Brett on many a hillclimb, so maybe this was payback of sorts. I'm lucky I wasn't indelibly scarred.

Fast forward to this week. I continue to learn about the nuances of skis. I've learned that my best racing skis are ill spec'd for my weight. One of my readers, Matt Kmiec, weighed in on this via personal email and just so happened to have a set of skis that might be perfectly suited for me. I had Friday off and decided to swing over to Keene to check out the skis. Like my race skis, they are RS:11s, the last year Atomic made them before coming out with the World Cup model. They are soft flex, very soft in the tips in fact, and had a custom cold grind structure. We met at Granite Gorge, a small alpine/nordic ski area just north of Keene. Only a few km were marginally groomed for skate, but there was a bit of climbing in it to get a good feel for ski behavior. I first did a loop on my stiff race RS:11s. Then a lap with Matt's RS:11s. Wow. Matt's skis were considerably faster. They were much easier to V2 on the uneven, rutted terrain. I didn't catch the tips as much. Gliding, I felt planted. With my stiff RS:11s, I always felt like I had springs under my feet. I expected Matt's skis to be just like my softer training RS:11s, but they weren't. They are probably even softer, but maybe just in the tips and not under the foot. I bought the skis.

Today I took my new skis up to Waterville Valley for some skiing with the gang. It was wicked cold starting out and it got colder as the day progressed. The trails were nicely groomed, very firm, but sandpaper slow some of the time. Brett and Jody were going to be a few minutes late and suggested Dave and I do a pond loop but no climbing to tire us out. I said we should do some hills waiting for him to get there so I wouldn't drop him so bad when the four of us head out together. He warned me that he'll be on his brand new top-of-the-line RCSs. Ooooweeee. I just love this trash talkin' stuff. What I didn't tell Brett is that I would also be on some brand new to me RS:11s. Thus I had a secret experiment planned.

The four of us start out on the south end, the first time skiing it this season. The big climbs are not here, but there are numerous steep little buggers. We hit Jennings Peak first, then Drakes to Upper Fletchers. Part way up Upper Fletchers, Brett and I did a heartrate check. He was 156bpm. He asked me and I said 156. He thought I was repeating his number, as I'm always much higher while skiing with him. Not so much on the bike, as we're pretty close there. Now sometimes your HR runs low and you're suffering. This was not the case. My HR was low and I felt comfortable. Hmmmm, were the skis responsible? I have made leaps in technique improvement this season, so no doubt that is a factor. We were both on new equipment. Maybe his skis/wax were wrong for the day. Starting out, he was quite confident they were fast though. Maybe I was just having an exceptional day. Who knows. There's no way to control an experiment of this sort. But it got me thinking.

After some more putting the hurts on each other around Criterion, we started climbing that beastly blip at the bottom of Lower Snows. At the top we compared HRs again. He was 156bpm, I was 152bpm. Now that has never happened before. I recall skiing with Brett a few years ago where he hovered in the 130's going up Livermore when I stayed in the 170's desperately trying to stay with him. Our relative fitness on the bike has changed little over the last few years, yet something dramatically has changed on skis. Maybe I'm finally starting to get it. I still didn't tell Brett I was on new skis. My new skis looked just like my other two pair. I'll probably get a WTF call when he reads this. Brett has always been able to put the screws to me on skis. He still can in areas where technique matters most. But I think I've reached parity on the climbs now.

I'm convinced I've been skiing on too stiff of skis until now. I'm sure improved technique is a factor. I've been trying to work Andy Milne's clinic feedback into my skiing. Stiff skis are easier to control on many surfaces when you lack good balance. I've been using stiff skis as a crutch to make up for bad technique. My new skis may be too soft on really hard surfaces, but I still have my beat up training RS:11s that are slightly stiffer to fall back on. Building fitness when I first took up cycling was far easier than learning skate technique. Remember my comment on kinesthetic IQ?

Brett, Dave and I stuck together for most of the ski. I logged 41.9km, 1265m vertical (over 4100ft) in 3:04 skiing time. Jody ended up buing some new skis today and is looking to make strides in his technique. When you have this much fun, you don't even notice temps dropping into single digits with sub-zero windchills. I enjoy these ski epics as much as the long dubious training value rides I do in the summer.

Next up is the Lake Placid Loppet in two weeks. Brett signed up for the 25km. Dave was going to do Lake Placid but now says some chainsaw class is more important that day. Dude, the ice storm trees on your property will eventually rot anyway! I've been on the fence for which distance to do. I could do quite well in the 25km I think, but a little voice says I need to redeem myself in the 50k. All my training has been for long distance. It would be nice to finish in the upper third, having the dubious honor of DFL a few years ago.

Weston Double Owie

Had to return to Weston again tonight for my weekly endorphin fix. They were serving up double shots. The 15" of new snow was groomed out nice but still soft in most areas of the course. At least the snow had decent glide. For those that didn't make it tonight, the course was longer than last week, went up more hills, and went three laps. Factor in the softness, it was a power course that would require some stamina. I felt my prospects should improve given this scenario.

Hard to say how many were there. At least 70 I'd say. I did not see the buses this time. As usual, I lined up in the sixth row. Brett Rutledge also made it out tonight and found an empty spot in the row ahead of me. I'm learning to dress lighter for these things. Despite being quite a bit colder than the first two weeks, I had a single layer on up top with my IBC wind breaker vest. I've had the vest almost a year now, and this is the first time I used it. I'm convinced it is impossible to get cold in a sprint race.

We take off at the base of Mt Weston. I lost only a couple positions this time on the start. We did not go over Mt Weston starting out, but it was in the course for laps two and three. There were some tangle ups at the start. With such a wide area, they were easy to avoid. Brett got a really good start and was about eight guys ahead of me. He and I are quite closely matched in training. He has much better form than I do, but I carry a little better fitness over from the bike. I hadn't gone head to head with Brett at Weston in a couple years. I've never beaten him there.

The first lap had a lot of tripping on poles going on around the corners. I started picking people off right away, avoiding the minor mishaps. I was more than 25 back once things got sorted out. Each time I passed another guy or two, Brett passed one or two also. My mantra became "had to catch Brett." He hooked up with some pretty fast guys and started to pull away. I was not going to catch him drafting slower skiers. I went into no-man's land for a good portion of lap one to latch on to Brett's train.

In lap two, we had a five or six man train. Things started slowing down so I came to the front on the flats. After 500m or so, I felt uncomfortably close to the hurl threshold. I capitulated the pull and let the three remaining others, including Brett, come by. We maintained a good pace for the rest of lap two. During lap two, I passed a guy that had on an obnoxiously bright headlamp. When I got in front of him I could see nothing but my own shadow. The snow to the sides was blinding blue-white, but blackness in front of me. Lamps should not be allowed during the race.

In lap three, we caught up to a couple others, including a big guy I later learned was Jamie Doucett. Life became good again. I knew my effort dropped quite a bit drafting Jamie. I couldn't be sure if it was because the pace was slower or purely drafting benefit. Regardless, I was content riding this train home.

Coming back from the flats, we climb that steep little bugger by the lodge building. Jamie is up front, then one or two other guys, Brett and then me. Brett caught an edge or tip maybe cutting the turn going into the hill a little too tight. He piled in right in front of me. I was almost as pissed as he was, not that he piled in in front of me, but I wanted to see how this thing was going to play out at the finish. We had less than a kilometer to go. Neither of us can sprint on the bike. Now I had several seconds lead on him with a sizable gap to the train I was supposed to ride home. I managed to get back on Jamie's group, tried to pass them on the next hill, but was completely gassed at that point. I had nothing left to contest the sprint and just stayed tucked in behind Jamie over the line.

I think this netted me 14th place overall with a finishing time of 25:47 minutes. Thus this race ran almost twice as long as last week's race. This finish should pick me up in the standings a bit, maybe bump me up a starting row. In the HR data, the elevated area is the race. You can see the precipitous dip near the end of the race where I got on Jamie's train, then things shoot right back up after I struggled to get back on when Brett bit it. In hind sight, I should have taken advantage of a couple opportunities to "attack" this group well before the finish. I hadn't planned to hit Weston every week. I would probably go through withdraw symptoms if I missed a week now.

From what I learned the last couple weeks about my two sets of RS11 skis, I knew better than to take my stiff racing ones. In these soft conditions, I would have been utterly doomed. Like at Rangeley last year. I took my rock skis. They felt perfect for the course, super stable, and my glide was just as good as others on the descents. Last week I would get gapped even drafting on the descents with my stiff racing skis. I have a potential pair of used RS11's in good shape to check out this weekend. They are soft flex with cold structure, which should be identical to my chewed up RS11's I use for training. I would then sell the stiff ones. They are in near new condition if anybody is interested.

They all go up...

When I went to bed last night, I thought skiing conditions today would be so sucky that I'd have to wait until Sunday when it was warmer. When I got up this morning, they were talking winter storm tonight and Sunday, so if I wanted to be sure I would get a ski in at all this weekend, it would have to be today. It was -22F at Waterville. I read it hit -50F somewhere in Maine. I waited until the temp got above 0F before heading off to Northfield Mountain instead.

32.3km, 1050m climbing, 2.4hrs

Northfield ties Waterville Valley in fun factor (if hills are your gig). I'd go there a lot more often, maybe even buy a season pass if the snow was more reliable. That is one advantage the Whites have vs. the Berkshires. The Whites tend to get snow earlier and keep it longer.

I hinted at performing an experiment a couple posts ago. I broke out the Toko Moly base prep and Start Green waxes. I spent a good deal of time waxing my best pair of skis, Atomic RS11's. I've heard the Start Green is hard to work with, but I took extra care to melt it in good and used a sharp scraper after cooling. I had no chatter or chipping issues. I then used my new Toko soft copper brush to leave as little structure in the base as possible. The bases were a thing of beauty, as long as you were heading for some very cold snow.

Side view of Tooleybush Turnpike in foreground

You may recall I speculated these racing skis may be too stiff for me, at least that was the excuse I was grasping at for slipping back a few places relative to my nemesis group at Weston last Tuesday. I did a table top test between my racing RS11's and my training RS11's. I cannot compress the race skis nearly as far as my training skis. They are identical model numbers but visually have different grinds and apparently flexes. I recall buying "stiff" versions for my race skis. The training skis I bought used and have no idea what they are, but now I assume "soft" flex. Referring to Atomic sizing charts, a 192cm stiff ski is way too much ski for me, generally for those that weigh over 180 lbs. I weigh 165. What this means is all of my weight is distributed only on the front and rear tips of the stiff skis, where it is more uniformly distributed on my training skis. Argh! I paid good money for those. At the time I wasn't that concerned with racing, and I figured I always skied with a Camelbak with 8 lbs of water and other crap in it anyway, so I needed the stiffer version. To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure the grind is "warm." Not exactly what I want when most of my skiing is in frigid conditions.

Looking down from top of Reservoir Rd

So I started my Northfield ski around 1pm. The parking lot was full and people were still coming in. There were highschool teams there too. Up on the mountain, it was not crowded at all. I went up Reservoir Rd first, an 800ft vertical ball buster with no warmup. It doesn't get as steep as Tripoli Rd at Waterville, but it keeps going and going. Coming down I got the most excruciating icecream headache. I saw some of the highschool girls there not even wearing hats. I figured surely I'm tougher than they are. I chose not to wear a balaclava, just a hat. I bet the kids didn't cruise 25mph for 10 minutes in single digit temps though. First my jugulars went numb, then the sides of my face, then the brain. Tough but dumb.

There are many tasty climbs here. In fact, all of the trails here go up. Unless, of course, you do laps on the field out by the road. I did Tooleybrush Turnpike next. This has some insanely steep pitches in it, at least 20%, maybe 30% grade in the section called The Chutes. Sandpaper snow made this a real slug fest. My skis weren't quite as slow as I expected, but slow enough that maintaining skate glide on these steep pitches took considerable focus. I wondered if my skis just needed good wax after all. I came back down Reservoir Road again for some more brain freeze action. In just two climbs, I contemplated not even doing a third. With this dry snow, it was so much work. I went there to do at least three, so 10th Mountain trail was next. This goes up the other side of the ski area, starting under powerlines. When the trail cuts into the woods, more painful pitches are in order. After summitting Northfield Mountain a third time, I was a cooked crispy critter.

The powerline section of 10th Mountain trail with some embedded punches

I hadn't finished my experiment yet. I also brought my training RS11's with old wax on. I skied them three times I believe since waxing, and I think I used warm flouro. They should be slow as mud, right? I did laps around the field first with my race skis, then the training skis. I was dismayed. The training skis had much better glide than my pristine race skis I spent 45 minutes waxing. How can this be? Plus the training skis felt so much more stable V2'ing. The bottoms are all chewed up and were white-ish looking, yet they were faster. Had I started on those, I bet I would have had enough left in me to do four climbs today. The grooming was even very firmly packed, yet these stiff skis were still so much slower. They were slower at Weston in warm wet conditions, and now slower in cold dry conditions. Both times the surface was similarly firm. I raced these at Rangeley last year in mashed potatoes. I suspect that is about the biggest mismatch I could have used.

So now what? I plan to do the Lake Placid Loppet. If I don't break new skis in soon, I will use my beat up training skis for it. I will look into Atomic World Cup skis, available up to 190cm length, but get the soft flex version. I'm not going to pay $500+ for them though. Perhaps there are still some RS11's out there cheap. I really like my training skis. I used to have some Fischer RCS's, but they had a different side cut and I could never feel stable on those things. I bought some RS10's back then, loved them, then upgraded to higher performance RS11's. My training RS11's were a recent acquisition, bought used with a few dings in them already for a really great price. My thinking was I would like to train on exactly the same ski I race on, but I've learned not all RS11's are built equal. I may seek out the advice of the good folks at Waterville valley on Sunday if we're not snowed in. And I'll try not to write another dissertation for my next post.