Sugarloaf Pickle

I've just put myself in a pickle. I signed up for the Sugarloaf 50km Marathon. So what's the deal, you may ask? I've skied about three times in the last two weeks. Work demands will make it pretty much impossible to get midweek skis in before the race. Thus I might go five weeks or more with just one ski workout per week into a very difficult race. As I commented on the Lake Placid Loppet, a three hour ski race is way harder than a three hour bike race. Imagine doing Battenkill on training only once per week. That would be far easier than doing a ski marathon on once per week training. The closest comparison I have for a 50k ski race is the Vermont 50 MTB race or the 62 mile Iron Cross race in PA. Sure, I maintain a nice aerobic base all year, but there is so much more to skiing than cardio.

So why did I sign up for it? I can't let this epic snow season slip away without doing another legitimate, punishing race. Locally, conditions have sucked for skiing for some time now. I have a season pass for Great Brook, but their trails have been better suited for studded tire mountain biking the last several weeks than skiing. They are probably closed for that matter. The tiny machine made track with Tuesday night crasheriums at Weston really cramps my style too. I'm not quite an age group contender in these things anyway, so I can treat Sugarloaf as a no pressure, low key event.

I should be ramping up the cycling volume by now. I have ramped up some, but I suspect full-on wheeled training won't start until very late this season, not until after I get back from Hawaii in mid April. I hope we can pull together another late April spring training camp down to Virgina. That would be a nice kick start. I got in about 15-20 hours in four days last year doing this. Either way, I feel pretty good about my fitness on the bike right now, and I should be good to go for some rides of legendary status in a month on the islands.

Beanbender for Breakfast

Work has been maddening lately. Major deadlines are coming up the next two weeks, one of them having me in DC for a couple days. So how does one deal with all this stress? Head to the mountains and ski! Yep, I went up to Waterville early this morning, hoping my absence to go unnoticed. I'll be working more than enough hours this week to make up the few I missed anyway.

The valley has gotten something like 30" of new snow in the last several days. I feared that since it took until today to finish grooming, I might encounter soft conditions. On top of that, it was wicked cold, in the single digits when I got there. This is the end of February folks. We supposed to be skiing on sugar granular in T-shirts by now. No such luck this morning. Conditions were painfully slow. The grooming was perfect, but poles would punch through in many places due to softness underneath a top layer that set up.

I had limited time. I planned to ski no more than two hours, so I could go out quite a bit harder than usual. I opted to head directly to the north end via the golf course and hit Beanbender first. Who needs a warm-up! The snow was noisy. It squealed under my skis like a kid peeling out in a '68 Camaro. I had to endure this racket the whole time I skied. Very demoralizing. I barely survived climbing Beanbender, slowing to less than 3mph on the steepest part. The descent down Snows was only slightly faster. The redeeming quality skiing this stuff this morning was zero wind, cobalt blue skies, and no people. It was still good to be out.

I try to ski a different route each time at WV. After cresting Snows, I descended all the way to the bottom of Snows, turned around, then climbed back up Snows to summit of Cascade Brook Trail. The descent down Cascade was quite sweet actually, with such slow snow there was no need to scrub off speed.

For my third and final hillclimb interval, I went over to Tripoli. Now this bugger must have been groomed just once since the last snow dump, and it was wicked easy to punch skis through the surface. It was mushier than a fresh cow pie. The harder I worked at it, the slower I actually went. I pretty much had to soft pedal this baby all the way up. I wrapped up by taking Swans back. So that was 600, 700 and 800 footers for the major climbs, the last one taking about 26 minutes. Three climbs perfectly sized for intervals. The workout was good for 31.2km, 2650ft in 2:19hrs.

I had thought about hitting Weston Tuesday night instead of this morning's ski, but after hearing the reports I'm glad I didn't go. A few good skiers crashed out of the race, getting banged up in the process. I would have hopelessly flailed away in those conditions and not gotten the workout I sought. I was pretty trashed after this morning's workout. Trashed in a good way.

I haven't talked much about riding lately. Perhaps the only thing more boring than talking about ski workouts is talking about routine lunch training rides. I've been on the road bike going on three weeks now. After averaging just over 4hrs per week riding for the first 8 weeks of the year, I worried that I could lose too much cycling specific fitness. I'm not as worried anymore after some stellar 30+ mile solo efforts. The desire to suffer is still there. Still though, it seems Battenkill is coming up awfully quick. I'll be doing Battenkill right after spending 12 days in Hawaii this year, so I'm not expecting much. I typically need a week to ten days to recover from my vacations.

This weekend is setting up to be another Waterville/Otis double header. Plan is to ski Saturday, ride Sunday, best of both worlds! Anybody up for a three hour romp at Otis?

WV/ToT Double Header

Haven't posted in a while, so quantity may override quality with this post. I've been able to dodge the viral bullet all winter until this week. I believe 60% of the office is sick this go around, and this is the second or third round this winter. Like usual, I loaded up on Airborne and Zinc lozenges at first hint of any suspicious sensations. Didn't work this time, but I must say this bug didn't slow me down much. I've been able to train right through it. I first suspected something coming on Wednesday night. By Saturday evening, I'm pretty near back to normal.

I had planned to do a 10k ski race today, but I felt that kind of intensity was not in my best interest right now. I opted for more endurance oriented activity. Having to roll with Mother Nature's punches, my off-Friday was a ski day, and today was bike day.

Trail of Tears Singlespeed Ride, Saturday Feb 21

Today was a pristine riding day, brilliantly sunny and seasonable temps. I went down to the Cape again, which escaped the most recent snow storm. My Massachusetts readers are probably wondering what snowstorm. We got only a few inches at our house on the state line, but up-state New Hampshire got 12-18". More on that later. I packed my singlespeed, feeling the need for some muscular flagellation. I'm still getting all the cardio flagellation I need on skis right now. Seeing how crowded Otis was last Sunday, I opted for Trail of Tears (ToT) in West Barnstable this time.

Starting out from Exit 5 on Rt 6, my legs were in a funk. The combination of skiing yesterday and remnants of a virus were behind this. But like last week, it was so nice riding in the woods that I quickly "forgot" what state my legs were in.

I'm still trying to figure out the best Hill Junkie worthy loop at ToT. Each time I go there, I have intentions of following a certain route, and each time I bungle it up. There are about four times as many trails there as what shows on the map. Nothing on the ground is marked. So when you get to a multi-way junction, do you take the first, second or third right? It's trial and error, and in one case today, I just gave up in frustration. Getting frustrated over following a plan is not worth tarnishing an otherwise perfect ride. It is better to just ride the friggin bike. All of the trails there are good.

My ride there takes me to some trails that are "off the map," if you know what I mean. These are in Sandwich. Not sure what the land status is there. I assume it is conservation land of some sort. The throttle set seem to rule that side, but the singletrack there is actually narrower, less refined, and way hillier. Singlespeeders will meet their match on a few of the climbs. I was forced off my bike several times. The descents will fulfill adrenaline needs. The trail bikes have made nice berms where berms have value.

Coming back into the West Barnstable side where the ToT loop lies, I attempted to follow the 16mi mountain bike loop. I eventually gave up and just rode stuff that took me in directions where I hadn't ridden yet. I missed no more than three miles of my planned route after looking at GPS data at home. No biggie at all. Next time I go there I'll be one step closer to getting it right. Plan is to have a 30 mile loop that doesn't revisit itself and takes 3hrs to complete. Today I rode 30 miles, 3230ft vertical in just over 3 hours, including a couple miles of pavement cool-down at the end to bask in my endorphin haze. A fabulous ride, probably excellent training value. I had way too much fun to even notice if any "training" was going on. Are your rides like this? Many of mine are.

WV Skate Ski, Friday Feb 20

Burried skis on Tripoli

Thursday night dumped a lot of snow on most of northern New England. I really had no idea how much fell in the mountains, leaving before Waterville Valley updated their website. I do know it took forever to get there. First, I waited 12 minutes to get a Starbucks. It seems Starbucks has been trimming their staff. Apparently their customers are quite loyal to wait in very long lines. With sufficient caffeine for the haul north, I quickly got bogged down. On the radio I heard there was a school bus accident on 93N in Concord. That was gone when I got there, but not the backed up traffic. The highway was slick. Then another slow down. No flashers yet. On left side of highway was mangled guardrail. Then up the road, the right side was damaged. Could same car have hit both sides? Yep. An SUV managed to destroy two guardrails AND have enough momentum to flip over the second guardrail and land in a crumpled heap in a gully. What, 80mph maybe? It was ICE! What do people think? Must have wanted first powder tracks really bad. He (or she) found them... in the bottom of a gully. I know, I didn't see what happened, but these kinds of things seem to disproportionately happen to SUVs. Perhaps ice triggered governors should be mandated for SUVs since drivers develop a false sense of security driving them in adverse conditions. If coffee and traffic lines weren't enough, I had one more line to wait in before getting to WV. It seems the drive north was taking so long that everybody had to stop at Exit 24 to pee. I waited in another line to use the restroom. Enough rant.

First tracks at summit of Tripoli

Eventually I reach the valley. It certainly was winter wonderland there. Was still snowing too. I was dismayed to see half of the trails weren't groomed. Being sick, I was taking it easy and headed out Swan's Way. This is a main thoroughfare, was groomed nicely, but nothing but mush. Skis and poles would punch through. They claimed 18" of snow fell during the storm. It was probably more like 12", but either way, anything that was groomed that morning had not set up yet and was unpleasant to skate. It was clearly a classic ski day.

When I got to Tripoli Rd, my favorite climb, I saw it was not groomed either. There was at least 4" of new snow on it at the bottom, more at the top. I gave it a whirl anyway. It actually skated better than the groomed stuff, as the skis stayed under the powder and on the firm surface below. There was more moisture in the snow down there too, as glide seemed much better than the groomed corduroy. It was not fast though. My skis would disappear under the snow each glide, then I'd have to pick them up high enough to not catch. The snow was quite powdery, so it was not overly difficult. It took me about 30 minutes to climb, a new PR^-1 (my geeky friends will get it).

There was a huge payback for climbing this 800ft ungroomed monster. It was the descent. Nobody had been up here yet, so it was just my tracks. Alpine skiers know how nice fresh powder is. It's not any different for skate skiers. My skis stayed completely submersed in the powder during the descent with my boots kicking up a plume of powder around my shins. Nary a whisper of sound was made. It was the quietest, smoothest descent I ever experienced on XC skis.

I went on to U. Osceola next. It too was ungroomed and must have last been groomed even earlier in the day Thursday, as it was even deeper. I was the only one making tracks here too. With all the classic skiers I saw out there, they were missing the best stuff by staying on the groomed trails.

I hit Cascade Brook trail next. It was groomed and not as mushy as some of the other groomed trails. There was no way I was going up Beanbender, so it was U. Snows then down Beanbender. Even though Beanbender was groomed out very wide, I still don't quite dare tele-ski on my skate skis. Not that I know how to tele-ski anyway. Cutting across the golf course at the bottom, I finished up with a lap around Criterion. It too had a segment that was not yet groomed. I guess the Piston Bully was out on the trails trying to catch up while I skied. I finished with 34.2km, 967m vert (3171ft), in 2:52hrs skiing time. That's probably my slowest average this season, but having not skied all week, it was still good to get out.

Otis Rocks!

I thought it would be difficult to top a supremely satisfying day at Waterville yesterday. I think I achieved a tie. After reading NEMBA reports that Otis was free of snow, I just had to get down there. This was a pattern I enjoyed most of last winter - ski in the Whites on Saturday, ride trails on the Cape on Sunday. But this winter didn't leave the Cape unscathed. Only after the 60F temps this week, did the last of the snow melt.

When I got to the Otis parking area along Rt 151, I was shocked. Parking space was at a premium. As I unloaded my bike, a hiker that had just come out of the woods rhetorically asked "is this a mountain biking mecca or what?" He was not one of the hostile hiker types. He got it. Then a couple guys pulled up behind me. They quipped there must be race going on today. It was that crazy. I think anybody that has touched tires to dirt from New England was there.

Not having ridden dirt for two months, I couldn't get my shoes on quick enough. I brought my Ti hardtail, which was still covered in Ozarks dust from my short trip to Arkansas. I hadn't touched that bike since uncrating it.

The trails were in superb shape. Maybe frozen in a couple spots, but hard, dry and fast. There were a couple minuscule icy patches. I went solo, as I always have trouble recruiting other New Hampshirites to make the haul down there. The time commitment really isn't any greater than skiing in the Whites. I ran into Rich Brown and posse at the top of Deer Horn Hill.

I did about three loops, starting out with that wonderful piece along Rt 28. Second and third loops took me further in. One of them had me follow the rails, then that trialsy trail. I don't clean too much on that one. It was so good to be back on dirt that I completely forgot how trashed I was from skiing three hours the day before. I finished the ride with 22.2 miles in 2:32hrs riding time. Interestingly, I averaged higher speed while climbing more vertical on skis yesterday.

Back home, my endorphin buzz was quickly snuffed out. I showered, was eating with my wife and son when Cathy says "what's that noise coming from the basement?" I open the door and hear what sounds like a large waterfall. I run down, and an open drain that the water softener drains into was spewing water. The washing machine was in a rinse cycle. The water softener goes into the same drain as the washing machine. I figured maybe soap scum plugged it up. I go back to finish my chili, then unscrewed a clean-out cover just below the plug, or so I thought. The pressure was so great it blew the cap out of my hands, and I took a brown shower. There was bits of corn in it even. There's only one way that could have gotten there...

I then went to the garage, unscrewed a 4" cap to main house line, thinking that will surely be open. Nope, spewed volumes more nasty substance into the garage. This time it was even chunkier. I could see all the way down that pipe to the far side of the house. Now I was worried, as there was only one more cleanout just before exiting the foundation to the septic system. To Lowes I went to get a snake.

I was now weary of taking clean-out covers off. The one at the foundation was much lower and probably had about 50 gallons of water behind it. I partially unscrewed it and filled 5 gallon bucket after bucket at a trickle pace. Eventually the water stopped. I pulled the cap and started feeding the snake in. The septic tank is about 12ft from the house. About 10ft in, the snake stopped hard. I could not get it through. I thought maybe ice. But then it went through. I fed it in about 25ft until I could tell I was hitting concrete, probably the far wall of the septic tank. I came back out to work on the obstructed area. There was definitely something there. After working back and forth through it for a long time, I figured I had it cleared, yet the water refused to go through. Now I was worried big time, thinking maybe my drain field was plugged. To bring heavy equipment out this time of year for new drain field would cost 10's of thousands. To add insult to injury, my son forgot I had all the inspection caps off and flushed a toilet upstairs. I went ballistic. Like the basement wasn't flooded with enough greasy corn laden residue already.

Aaron did have a good idea though. I had a solid oak hand railing that was about 16ft long. That stuff cost about $10/ft, but I was desperate. Aaron suggested using that to ram the obstructed area as last ditch effort. Sure enough, I could not get it through at first. The point on the snake is like a deer arrow head, a pretty small cross section. The railing though was about 2.5" in diameter. Eventually I pounded it through. With a hose, I got water to go through. I could then see down the pipe. There appears to be some kind of intrusion into the pipe about 8-12ft away from the foundation, like a rusty spike or something poking in. I guess over time enough stuff got stuck on that and plugged 'er up. I was relieved the septic system was still fine. Now we had a huge mess to clean up. The basement and garage smell unbelievably bad. So do I, after scrubbing in the shower. Maybe people will stay out of my office tomorrow.

All in all, a small damper on an otherwise out of this world weekend. There's some speculation that a big storm could be brewing for later this week. I just hope it doesn't take Otis back out of the picture.

WV Perimeter Sweep

I remained a tad skeptical heading up to Waterville Valley today. After warm temps and heavy rain earlier this week, most areas were pretty much turned into hockey ice. Reports from the Valley begged to differ, so Dave Penney and I headed up. Conditions were either going to be a frozen granular nightmare or a speedfest not to be missed.

It was in the teens starting out. The wind was kicking up something fierce too. The brilliant sun and cloudless skies helped make up for it. Our goal for the day was to ski a complete perimeter loop, hitting all of the high points along the way. This was not going to be a hammerski session, but more of an endurance/tempo paced workout. I figured it would take about 3.5hrs.

We started by heading up Jennings Peak from the Nordic Center. The trail surface was quite hard and scratchy but nicely edgeable. And it was fast! Finally we got some transformed snow to zing around on. Prospects were quite good both of us would complete a full perimeter sweep of the trails.

I brought my new cheapy movie camera with me, velcro strapped to the side of my head Borg style. Today I was capturing my first real footage, or should I say megabytes. I followed Dave down the Jennings switchbacks while recording. He’s still nursing a tweaked ankle and played it safe. Barely able to edge skis around the switchbacks got the heartrate going a few beats higher.

The Upper Fletchers and Criterion climbs were next. Everything was meticulously groomed. The granular surface offered twice the glide that I’ve become accustomed to this winter. You’d think that would make the climbs easier. No. You just go faster. We got to the golf course in well under an hour. This took 75 minutes the last time I was here when I worked a lot harder on sandpaper snow. I shot some more video across the golf course. In 1280x720p HD, it looks quite nice. You’d never know a $95 camera captured it.

The further north we got in the valley, the more tempered the granular surface became. The Swazeytown/Beanbender climb was a piece of cake compared to prior times. We bombed down Upper Snows to pick up Cascade Brook Trail, one of my favorites. I captured more video from the top back down to junction with Snow’s. I was amazed how big the H264 coded file sizes were when I got home, so only this 4 minute snipped is included here. Vimeo upload size was 147MB, but they basterdized the embeddable resolution almost as badly as Youtube does. I can play the original full-screen and not see pixels. Note about 18sec in, Dave almost bit it, thus the victory salute.


Cascade Brook Trail from D. Jansen on Vimeo.

Heading down Livermore was delightfully fast, but the fierce headwind placed a speed governor on the steepest bits. We ran into Mike Seeger, the Nordic Center director, at the bottom of Osceola. He intercepted a mountain biker coming over from the other side of Thornton Gap, perhaps with intentions of bombing down the groomed side of Tripoli Road. I’m thinking to myself “how cool!” Mike told the guy he wasn’t interested in him messing up the ski trails.

The north side of the north end got a light dusting of snow that was tilled in with the granular. It had superb surface texture. Skogs would have been so enamored by conditions on Moose Run/Wicked Easy, he would have skied that all day and forgot the rest. We talked with a couple CSU guys from the Westborough area there. My camera seemed to be quite the conversation piece.

Continuing on our perimeter mission, the Upper Osceola out and back was next. Dave was assimilated next by donning the Borg contraption. I went down first but skied out of camera range a little too quickly.

The beastly Tripoli Road out and back climb was next. With such good glide, you really had the luxury to “soft pedal” up this one with legs going a little limp. It was straight into the wind up top. With a nice sugary granular surface and tailwind, 30mph (50kph) should easily be achievable on the descent if you dare. I believe this was the first time I broke 30mph on this descent. A more skilled or more reckless skier could potentially break 40mph in these conditions. Alpine skiers may not think any big deal of this, but keep in mind skate skiers have free heels, have zero shape to their flimsy skis, and have no edges. In other words, you have no brakes. Factor in that people are also coming up these narrow trails, it’s risky business carrying a boatload of speed. I’ve gone over 50mph before on alpine skis, and that is not nearly as scary as going 30mph on a XC ski trail.

To complete our perimeter sweep, we did the little Pipeline Trail blip, an often overlooked trail. Then it was Swan’s Way back to the Nordic center. Temp was in the 20’s finishing up with nary a cloud in the sky. It doesn’t get any more perfect than that. We finished with 44.3km, 1274m (4180ft) of climbing, in 2 hours, 55 minutes skiing time. It was one of my best ski days of the season.

Credit Spending

Last week I offered to offset unearned vertical for the gravity challenged set. I have not received any payments yet. So I plan to spend some of my credit in Hawaii. The premiere MTB ride on Maui is the Skyline/Mamane descent from the summit of Haleakala. One could conceivably climb from sea level to 10,000ft on pavement with their MTB in 36 miles to earn the ride. But that would likely take 4-5hrs, and we're on vacation after all. I have enough credit (upwards of 80,000ft) to cover Steve and I for a shuttle assisted descent.

East Maui

On April 2 or 3, we plan to have our wives drop us off at the Haleakala summit. The summit area is very nearly barren, martian in appearance. Off the back side, away from all the normal tourists, weaves a ribbon of trail between cinder cones. Very little pedaling is required. In fact, the lava rock can be frightening loose at speed along much of the descent. If we start late in the morning, the daily cloud cover should already be developed below us. It is a quite spectacular sensation to descend from brilliant, crisp air through clouds, maybe some rain, later to pop out from under the clouds in humid, tropical air. I think we pass through five climatic zones on the way down.

Skyline Tr, Mamane Tr, Waipoli Rd

Skyline Trail follows the spine of Haleakala. Mamane trail, a newer singletrack built for mountain biking, cuts down at a much steeper grade to Polipoli State Park. From there a gravel road through redwood forest skirts along the mid flanks of Haleakala in the clouds. Eventually, a one-lane paved road averaging 12% grade with over 20 switchbacks drops us another few thousand feet. Several more miles of single lane roads are take at gentle grades back to Kahului at sea level. 10,000ft plummet in about 32 miles on mountain bikes. Guilt free by using accumulated vertical credits. Life doesn't get any better than that.

Battenkill vs. Lake Placid

Having done both the Battenkill road race and the Lake Placid Loppet multiple times now, I thought comparing them might be interesting. They both entail similar amounts of climbing, around 4000ft. Masters winning times between the two events are comparable, around 2.5hrs. Battenkill covers 55 miles of dirt and paved roads while Lake Placid covers 31 miles on snow. So one would think the suffer factor should be nearly equal between these two events, right? Not even close.

In a ski race like Lake Placid, there is no sitting in. There are only fleeting instances where you might derive some draft benefit. It is pretty much a 2.5-3hr individual time-trial. Battenkill on the other hand, has lengthy flat, open sections where one can reduce their workload sitting in the pack by 40%. Sure, it's each man for himself on the climbs, but more than half the race you have the option to reduce your effort to conversation pace. No such deal skiing.

Skiing is weight bearing, riding is weight supported. Any weight bearing activity automatically drives up your heart rate. More muscle mass is activated to keep your balance. On the bike, coasting really doesn't require any energy expenditure beyond base metabolic rate. I have coasted down long hills on the bike an saw my HR drop into the 50's. I'm lucky if I can see below 110bpm gliding down a long hill on skis.

XC skiing brings all of your major muscle groups into play at once - legs, core, upper body and arms. This places huge demand on your cardio system. While cycling utilizes your biggest muscle groups, a relatively few muscles are used.

When you add all this up, you can hold a much higher HR over three hours skiing than you can three hours cycling. Does HR matter? Not really. Skiing is a sure fire way to achieve maximum endorphin buzz. You will feel it's sedating effects for days afterwards. No expensive controlled substances needed. A fix you can get in 5-6hrs riding can be had in just 3hrs skiing. I used to call XC skiing cross-training. Not anymore. It's all part of the package deal of doing active things you enjoy. It has been quipped that cross-training is for people who hate bicycles. Heading out to one of the many mountain XC ski centers for a three hour ski is really no different than heading over to your favorite riding trails. No cars, few people, lots of challenging terrain, and the sense of being fully satiated when you're done. Skiing is much simpler, really, even than riding a singlespeed. There are very few moving parts to skis. It's just you and Mother Nature. There's been way too much whining lately about the severity of this winter, trainers suck, salt ate my bicycle type crap. Do something that doesn't suck. Take advantage of an epic winter. I may start whining when spring arrives and I can't ski anymore. I don't hate my bicycle either.