Orthogonality

Numero Uno
In Fahrenheit.  That was the "bank sign" temperature at the Waterville exit Saturday morning. It was colder at the Nordic Center. The high winds had died down though. And the sun was brilliant. It did not feel cold at all. Lack of glide reminded us that it was still cold.

Brett and I went up mid morning for our last endurance ski before the Lake Placid Loppet next weekend. I sure hope Lake Placid gets more snow. That second lap will be scraped down to boiler plate if they don't. Conditions were surprisingly good at WV. They had gotten a few inches of snow to freshen things up a bit, but not nearly enough to open any of the south end trails. A limited selection of north end trails were open, the ones I go there for. Livermore and Tripoli were perfect. All the trails had firm, freshly minted corduroy. Saw several other cyclists doing the skatey skier thing.

We skied a total of 38.3km in 2:21hrs. One of my faster averages at WV despite some of the slowest snow. We worked pretty hard. The parking lot was overflowing when we left, so the scary cold temps didn't scare too many people away. We had no trouble staying warm, although by the time I reached the bottom of Tripoli, my lobstah mitts had frozen into a solid hand cast. Good motivation to keep moving, eh?

Aiming for Gray Space
Sunday was 3hr ride day. I thought about riding locally on icy snowmobile trails, but my winter beater bike with studs barely shifts right now. Seems derailleur cable housings are already rusted up from road salt. My singlespeed is working nice though. Near zero maintenance. The promise of riding bare dirt on a perfectly working machine was just enough to entice me to head down to the Cape again. I couldn't get any takers. They don't know what they're missing.

Temp was in single digits at home but in the 20's on the Cape. I hit Trail of Tears last weekend, so I planned to get my fix at Otis this time. There were a lot of cars there, including several with NH plates. Legs felt pretty good starting out even though I skied hard the day before. I pretty much hammered for two hours straight. Then two days of hard work caught up to me and I imploded.

I've given up trying to follow a specific route at Otis.  There are hundreds of decision points. The area is fully built out with trails. You can get to any point from any point quite directly. So to minimize hitting stuff twice, I just aimed for gray space on my GPS screen. Start getting close to my track on the right, take next left to veer away from it. Worked quite well I think.  I did do a little double backing, but it was intentional.

It was a glorious day to be on the trails. Zero snow, ice or mud, and abundant sunshine. Temp in 20's is downright balmy when you ski in single digits on a regular basis. I rode about 29mi in 2.9hrs with 3000ft of climbing.

So when Brett and I were done skiing, he asks me how I can go out for a hard bike ride the next day, like won't my legs be completely dead? Yep. Usually. Skiing really diminishes ability on the bike, but riding doesn't seem to trash the body for skiing nearly as badly. Don't know why. When you think about it, the two activities are largely orthogonal. Much of the motive force skiing is derived from upper body muscles which cycling doesn't use at all, and lower body contribution doesn't hit cycling specific muscle groups very hard. There is one very important muscle that prevents any two aerobic disciplines from becoming truly orthogonal. Your heart. If your cardio system didn't need recovery, then a top triathletes could actually be tops in each of the disciplines against single sport athletes. The saying "A triathlete is a jack of all trades, master of none" wouldn't hold true. But there are many systems in the body that require recharging after endurance workouts. This limits total training volume and ability to train for multiple disciplines.

When I ride the next day after a hard ski workout, I notice it mostly in lack of top-end. It's not so much the cycling muscles are fatigued. There is the lead feeling in the legs, but only when I try to sustain a hard effort. It is the rest of the system that fails to keep up. There is a mental aspect involved here too. I've learned that you can't forego a hard workout just because you feel like crap getting up in the morning. When you get on the bike and push through this, you feel pretty good 30 minutes into it.  I've been doubling up back to back hard days for several weeks now. These are ski/bike on Tues/Wed, which are shorter VOmax efforts, then ski/bike on Sat/Sun, which are longer intensive endurance efforts. A rest day is usually needed after one of these doublets. When I get up the third morning, it feels like nothing in my body escaped unscathed, in a good kind of way.  Not sure what this will get me in ski marathons, but I'm optimistic it will pay dividends come bike racing season.

F.I.T.

Many months ago I promised to begin core work in the hopes I would suck a little less at skiing and try to bring balance back to my body from cycling, which pushes everything out of whack. It never happened. I even bought a medicine ball. My wife is the only one using it. Today I learned just how pathetically most of my body is out of shape.

I left my road bike in the car from Wednesday's tough 75 minute ride with SteveG at lunch. I failed to look at Thursday's forecast. Snow moved in before lunch. Steve was thinking about going to Kevin Buckley's gym, Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. He'd been bugging me for months to try it out. First visit is free even. A quick phone call even eliminated the excuse that all I had was winter cycling spandex with me. His wife Gina would come too and bring an extra pair of shorts and shirt with her. I bet she wasn't going to miss this for the world.

Kevin wasn't working this day. His partner Michelle would lead the lunch session. Kevin and Michelle's program is all about Functional Interval Training, or FIT. The whole body is brought into play to do seemingly silly things are surprisingly effective in strengthening the core and everything else.  The gym is on the fourth flow of an old mill building downtown Nashua. I thought the climb up was a pretty good workout in itself. Going back down after the workout was the real test though.

We warmed up for about 10 minutes doing a myriad of motions designed to loosen up the body. I was clearly the least limber in the group of eight. I was also the least coordinated. I forget what name was given to the medley of exercises that comprised the core of the workout. There were five stations. We would spend 40 seconds at each station, transition to the next in 20 seconds, until each exercise was completed twice. This would take 10 minutes. A two minute rest was given before starting second and third rounds. Whole routine lasted 34 minutes. How hard could that be? VERY HARD. Here's the five exercises:

1. Battling Ropes
2. Sitting Tucks
3. Swimmers
4. D-ball clean/press
5. Double kettlebell squats

The ropes were slung around a pole about 20-30 feet away. There was a thick rope and a really thick rope, like barely get your hand around it. Idea was to keep the rope in motion, either waves or spirals. Sitting tucks are kind of like crunches, but your feet and back are not supposed to touch the floor. The swimmers were like double poling with straight arms, bungee cords from the wall. D-ball clean/press consisted of hoisting a dead weight ball above your head in controlled fashion, and letting it down in controlled fashion. The kettlebell squats are deep knee squats with dual kettlebells at your chest.

So how did I do? Letter grades for 1-5 above were C, F, B, C-, D-. If these were college class grades, I might be able land an enterprising job in the fast food business.

Starting on the large battling ropes, I'd say the ropes whipped me around more than I whipped them around. This takes all kinds of shoulder and core stability muscles to keep it going with any kind of energy. 30 seconds into the 40 second interval, my arms were ready to fall off. Steve must have had pity for me, as he took the large ropes the remainder of the session. C was the highest I could grade myself on this one, as the smaller ropes were for women.

Next up were sitting tucks. First off, I could not do these without cheating. At all. My ab muscles would immediately crap out and feet or back would drop to the floor. So I used the beginner method of placing my hands just behind my butt for stability. Even then, I could not go 40 seconds. I became quite certain I have a rare genetic condition where I never grew abdominal muscles. It was an ugly scene. Got an F on this one.

Swimmers were next. This looked a lot like double poling. I thought this should be pretty easy, so I went for one of the thicker cord sets. But of course, I had it all wrong. Michelle had to correct my technique. Idea was to hold handles like gripping a bar in front of you, hands over, then bring arms all the way back with no bend in the elbows. Not so easy. At least you could fake this one without completely embarrassing yourself. I gave myself a B, mostly for aesthetics.

So how about the D-ball presses? Steve went right for the 80 pound ball. You got to be shittin' me! I picked up a 30 pounder and wondered if I would drop it on my head. That went ok the first time around. The second time around I tried a 40 pounder. After 40 seconds, my arms were violently trembling while raising the ball above my head. My back started go all wonky too. Hmm, C- I guess.

The last station was the kettlebells. I've never worked with these before. I've never done a squat before. I know my knees don't like deep bends. Anything more than the 60 degrees or so on the bicycle is too much. And on a bike, this is top dead center with no weight on them. My knees just don't ever go there, and I don't ask them too. I started with a single 12kg kettlebell. The first time I squatted, I felt all kinds of random bits of tissue in my knees giving way. I quickly concluded that even my own body weight is too much to squat, without additional dead weight at my chest. So here's the kicker. Steve's wife grabs two kettlebells (like we're supposed to), cranking out more squats with deeper bend with twice the weight of what I used. And she doesn't weigh a whole lot more than half what I weigh. Yeah, I got girled big time. In fact, I think I got girled at most of the routines. This one was pretty nearly a failure too, so I give myself a D-.

By the last time through the sequence, I couldn't even do a single sitting tuck. The two miniscule abdominal muscle fibers I might have possessed when we started had shit the bed. Interestingly, my quad muscles seemed to hurt the most. I'm pretty sure it was due to eccentric muscle contraction, where the muscle is contracting while lengthening. You never do this on a freewheel bicycle. You do it hiking down a mountain, which explains why I get debilitating shin splints each time. Who'd think these workouts would make cycling muscles hurt?

It was a great workout none the less. Gives me something to think about. I know I lack fitness in many areas, and this just kind of put it right out there in a quantative way. I have to find a way to bring this type of conditioning into my schedule and weekly routine. I'm bound to run into problems sooner or later if I don't.

Wrecking at Weston

Normally, I would avoid Weston after a deluge or when it freezes into boiler plate. But given recent weather, what is a skier to do? Even Bretton Woods at the base of Mt Washington was closed today. The snowmaking gurus at Weston were wise to stockpile snow when the making was good. Nearly the full spint course was covered, although it was super saturated, coarse corn snow. Kind of surreal to ski a ribbon of snow amongst grass and pools of standing water.

Having skis dramatically lose glide last week in similar conditions, I figured I would use a harder wax this time even though it would be warmer and wetter. If dirt was plugging up my skis, a harder wax may offer a little more resistance. For tonight, I used cheap HF Fast Wax for sub-freezing temps. The temp was about 38F. I also planned to limit my warmup, since I only brought one pair of skis. No need to pick up excess dirt before the race. I can always ski a little longer afterwards. My "race" skis still have storage wax on them. Conditions just haven't been good enough at Waterville to bring them out. Plus they have a very fine structure for new, cold snow. I suppose I could warm up on my race skis and race on my rock skis with a more aggressive structure, but working until 9am 9pm most nights precludes messing around with skis anymore than I have to right now. I may invest in riller though, so I can add more structure to my rock skis when needed.

Buying my trail pass, another skier dropped $150 on Toko HF yellow and HF Moly. I was tempted to pick some up too, especially with Lake Placid coming up on what could be similar dirty, transformed snow. I thought even harder about it after the race. More on this in a minute.

Warming up, I knew I was going to biff in this one. Conditions were highly variable, from ankle deep loose corn snow to very hard areas. The last minute grooming left some pretty big ridges in the skate lane too. Then there was the bottomless pit of corn snow at the bottom of the chute by the clubhouse. My knees nearly buckled the first time going through it unaware. I made a big mental note to avoid that in the race.  I did two moderate pace warmup laps before lining up. My skis felt reasonably fast.

I lined up in 5th row, four across, since I typically finish around 20th place. I got a decent initial start. Nobody crashed in front of me. But I immediately came undone. I could not control my flailing and efficiently transfer energy to the variable surface. Upwards of 10 guys came around me in the first minute. Things thinned out, then I went to work to reclaim some of those lost positions as they slowed down.

Coming around on the next lap, I was just latching on to long line of guys with Victor and Marv in it. I come flying down the initial bump by the club house and see Marv and another skier drop over the lip. They never exited. I guess the other skier bit it in the corn snow pit, taking Marv out, and I had no where to go. I was quite certain my skis were going to shish kebob Marv's torso at 25mph. I laid it down while barely avoiding the other two. So much for catching the train. There were many other wrecks during the race, I think mostly skiers taking themselves out.

At least nobody got hurt. I don't think anybody passed us even though we lost 15sec. The three of us worked together in no man's land for a while. About half way through the third and final lap, I came to the front and manage to put a small gap on Marv. My skis were still going good, not slowing down. I had a drafter though, and another guy we dropped earlier came up in my draft in the final descent to the finish. I had nothing to contest the spot up for grabs.

Assuming we take two minutes off the clock time, I finished the 7km race in 20:02 minutes, good for 20th position overall, slightly better than last week. This was the most grueling race yet for me this season, due partly to conditions and partly it was a much longer race. It was exactly what I came there for, my mid week fix.

After the race, I ran into the guy who dropped some serious coin on wax before the race. Apparently he had enough time to wax. He was thoroughly impressed with the result, surprising himself, using superlatives to describe how fast his skis were. I don't know what he was using previously. Quite the unsolicited testimonial.  I almost bought some when I was done skiing, but it was late. I may take the plunge next week depending on how conditions look for Lake Placid on February 6. In my case, I still think this is analogous to a mid-pack Cat 5 roadie investing in $1200 carbon wheels. Sure, maybe I'll pick up another couple spots at Weston, but I really need to continue work on technique first. Going to Weston is all about pushing my body to the extreme limit for 15-20 minutes, not trying to eek out one more position in the results. Kudos to the crew that pulled this night together against all odds. Nobody went home disappointed.

Which was better?

Went up to Waterville again on my "off" Friday. My company touts the 9/80 work schedule as one of the reasons that makes it an employer of choice.  This means you work 9 hour days until you hit 80 hours, then you get a Friday off. Increasingly though, there are more and more cars in the parking lot on off-Fridays. In fact, when I interviewed for my current position several years ago, my hiring manager said off-Fridays were great. You can come in and really get some work done without so many interruptions! Like that was a bonus. Work longer days just so you can work on off-days to catch up. He retired shortly after I joined the company, but in these uncertain economic times, it seems many of my peers have adopted this mindset. So yeah, others tried to make me feel guilty taking my "off" Friday morning off to ski before going into work.

The conditions were no less than spectacular. Freshly groomed corduroy abounded with barely a soul around. It was wicked cold overnight but temps soon climbed to around freezing with bluebird sky, brilliant white capped mountains all around, and nary a breeze. The snow had half the speed of Weston's Tuesday night slush fest.  The few inches Waterville received early in the week did a nice job sprucing up the trails.  I did some hard work on skis and bike midweek, so I planned to take it easy. I hit everything on the north end at least once, including climbing Beanbender. So much for going easy. There is no such thing as a V-0.5 technique to granny gear up this 25-30% grade ski slope.

There were no other ski tracks on the Livermore side. I encountered a single set of skate tracks on Tripoli. I surmised this skier was very similar in ability to me. I went a stiff tempo pace and very nearly matched this other skier's tracks. Ski angle and spacing per push-off was nearly identical on average. However, my unseen nemesis carried V2 technique further into the steep pitches than I could, so I would fall behind a push or two. But then I could tell where, during a long steep part, he would tire in his (or her) V1 technique as I gained back the lost push-offs and then some. As the grade slackened, the other skier would commit to V2 sooner and gain on me again. Interesting, at least to an oxygen deprived brain. I bet over the 2.5 mile climb, I gained or fell behind no more than two or three steps. It is pretty much impossible to deduce the speed and ability of a bike rider from tracks left in the dirt. On really steep terrain, you can tell where the rear tire slips with pedal strokes, but you have no idea of what gear they may be in, and thus speed or cadence. In skating, the angle of the skis is indicative of the "gear" the skier is in.

I finished with 40.4km in about 2.6hrs with over 3000ft of climbing. It was probably my most satisfying ski session this season. I had originally planned on doing the Freeman Challenge race at Waterville this weekend, but lack of base on the south end forced them to cancel it.

We're finally back to balance here in New England - balance between perfect snow in the mountains and no snow on the Cape. When I saw the last of the snow disappear from Cape webcams earlier in the week, I knew exactly what I would be doing Saturday morning. I left very early to ensure frozen ground. I figured there was good chance the sun could soften things up. It was only 8F at my house when I got up, but 20 degrees warmer than that in West Barnstable.

Even though I felt pretty wrecked from a hard training week, I took the singlespeed with me. It had been neglected for about a month now. Surprisingly, I did not need to add air to the tubeless tires. The fork needed about 15 lbs.  I saw lots of NEMBA forum traffic on Otis. I hit that already this winter before the big Cape snowstorm. I hadn't ridden the Trail of Tears (ToT) since last February. I was itchin' to go back.

30 miles of this!

There was only one car at the Exit 5 parking area, probably a non-biker car. Had me worried. Were the trails too muddy? Still too much snow? My worries soon vanished. The trails were free of snow and were frozen rock hard. Must be everybody went to Otis nearby. I worked my way west on the ToT, then crossed over into Sandwich to ride the narrow moto singletrack. This stuff degenerates into some insanely hilly stuff, especially for a singly geared rider. I found several more miles of stuff I hadn't ridden before that was either 25% grade up or down with very little in between. Dismounts were frequent. I could tell from the few patches of crusty snow that nobody had been on this trail since the snowstorm. The trail was littered with tree debris. No way would my geared bike have survived this. Sticks an inch in diameter were either locking my wheels up or snapping into pieces. Eventually I gave up stopping to pull every nuisance piece that clung inside the spokes, choosing to grind it into mulch instead. Those Mavic Crossrock wheels sure are tough. They're heavy, so they ought to be tough.

Red trace from Feb '09 ride, Yellow from today's ride. The ToT loop

is on the West Barnstable side of the track, the moto loop is contained

in the upper left quadrant of the image.

I did a loop upwards of 12 miles on the moto trail before connecting back into the ToT. I think I logged over 2000ft of climbing in those 12 miles, and the single biggest climb was 50ft. That is a lot of 50ft walls to mash at 30rpm. Hope my back forgives me. The riding on the ToT is much kinder, gentler stuff. I could actually get some momentum going again. The town map is accurate as far as the official ToT route goes. But it fails to show how many ways you can go at some intersections. Thus the map is pretty much useless, as nothing on the ground is marked. You have to guess, and sometimes you guess wrong. It doesn't really matter. I kind of know the lay of the land there now, and all of the riding is about the same. It is all good. I was able to follow about 80% of the route I planned to hit on my way back to the car.

Close-up of partial Moto loop in Sandwich. Flat image fails to convey

how deeply corrogated the topography here is.

I finished the ride with 30 miles, 3800ft in 3.3hrs on the GPS. It was another flawless day for the planned activity. The ground remained frozen.  I never saw another rider, and only twice did I encounter another person, once starting the ride and again right near the end of the ride. That means I had 3hrs of perfect solitude in the middle. It doesn't get any better than that. I do need to get DaveP and SteveG down there some time though. So was the riding better than the skiing? It's a toss. It is interesting to note that even on slow snow, I can skate faster than I can mountain bike in similar terrain on dirt.

Winter project

Last fall I demo'd or rented different 29er hardtails. One was a specialized S-works at Fort Rock. I immediately grasped some of the benefits and disadvantages of big wheels. Mostly benefits.  Having gotten back into MTB racing last summer, I was ready to upgrade my hardtail racing platform. S-works don't come cheaply. I got some pricing on framesets and then contemplated my next move for several weeks.

During my period of contemplation, I travelled to Tennessee for a weekend escape of mountain biking.  I rented a Gary Fisher Paragon, also a 29er. It was a lower end bike with aluminum frame and mid-grade components. It handled much differently, set up with a different frame geometry GF calls Genesis-2. Being alloy, the frame was much stiffer than the S-works. I was somewhat disappointed in the flexiness of the S-works frame. I had no interest in building up an aluminum hardtail though. I break 'em too quickly.

I did a little more research in to Gary Fisher offerings. In 2010, they offer only the singlespeed Superfly as a frameset. The MSRP of the SS Superfly was many hundreds of dollars less than the S-works. I went back into contemplation mode for a while again. Finally, working with a LBS, I put in a formal request to see if I could get a geared version of the 2010 Superfly. The answer was yes, but not as a frameset. I could get a frame, the same custom offset Fox 29" fork used on the SS frameset, but no semi-integrated headset. The headset was no biggie. The price was reasonable. I wanted in.

That was about two weeks ago. Yesterday I was still waiting for a call confirming a delivery date, expected to be in March. So last night I put an order in for the build kit:

• SHIMANO CN-7701 9SP CHAIN
• SHIMANO XTR M971 FRONT DERAILLEUR 34.9mm
• SHIMANO XTR SL-M970 RAPIDFIRE LEVERS
• SHIMANO XTR PD-M970 PEDALS
• HAYES STROKER TRAIL PLAIN PACKAGING '09 White
• ODI ROGUE LOCK-ON GRIP BONUS PACK
• EASTON MONKEYLITE XC RISER BAR '08 31.8mm, Low Rise, 685mm Wide
• THOMSON ELITE X4 MOUNTAIN STEM Black, 100mm, 10 Deg, 31.8mm
• SHIMANO XTR M972 SHADOW REAR DERAILLEUR Gs 9Speed Top Normal, Low Profile Design
• SHIMANO XTR M970 CRANKSET W/ BB Sil/Gry, 175mm, 44-32-22T
• CANE CREEK ZS-3 HEADSET Black, 1 1/8", Zerostack Type, 44mm Od
• SHIMANO DEORE XT M770 CASSETTE SPROCKET 11-13-15-17-20-23-26-30-34T, 9 Speed

Missing are wheels. Really struggling on that one. Options are Shimano XT tubeless, Mavic Crossmax UST, or maybe American Classic. The deal is, many 29er folks are running tubeless conversion setups, not true UST tubeless. They do this for multiple reasons, among them are much greater choice in tire selection, weight management, and potentially better traction with standard tires that are more supple. The down side is tubeless conversion setups aren't as reliable. I put high value on reliability. Not just for racing, but for epic rides as well. I did some big off-road races this past year with no flats or mechanicals. I use 26" UST wheels and tires. UST offerings for 29" wheels and tires are very limited.

Roadie or skier readers might not have a clue what I'm talking about here, but UST is a strict tubeless tire/rim interface standard. It differs from regular tube type tires in how the bead hooks on the rim.  When riders take ordinary rims with spoke holes in them, use strips and tapes to seal them, then mount regular tires on them without a tube, all kinds of interesting things can happen. Sealant is required to keep air from leaking out. The sealant can act like a lubricant at the rim interface and allow the bead to slip right off of the rim. Sounds like a shotgun going off when this happens. More likely is to hit an object hard and "burp" the tire, where the bead seal is momentarily broken and much air is lost before the seal is re-established. I really don't want to deal with these risks. I'd rather take the weight penalty of a certified UST tubeless setup.

There are now "tubeless ready" tires on the market. These don't necessarily conform to any kind of standard like UST. I may experiment with these on UST wheels. Bontrager markets a number of 29" tubeless ready tires, but I have yet to find a Bontrager tire I like, for road or off-road. The tire I may start with could be Hutchison Python's, which come in 29" UST. I've ridden Pythons before, many years ago. A fast tire, but not for all conditions.

A couple other missing items from my list above are seat post and saddle. I know exactly what I want for these (Thomson and Terry), it's just the place I ordered the other stuff from was wicked expensive for these items. I got good deals on some of the items above, like $69 for the Hayes Stoker brakes and $399 for the XTR crankset.

So I was ready call the LBS today to bitch about why they haven't gotten back with me yet on a delivery date. They called before I could call, not to give me a date, but to tell me my frame and fork were in already. Holy crap! I thought I had all the time in the world to get parts on order. Now I really have to decide on wheels. There's a chance I could head to Tucson with this new rig in March if I get it built up in time.

The 2010 Gary Fisher Superfly frame. 1280 grams with water bottle

bolts, seat post clamp, and derailleur hanger. Goal is to build it up

2 lbs lighter than my small-wheeled Dean Ti hardtail (which was sent

back three months ago for repair).

Slurpee Ski

A couple weeks ago I was bitchin' about riding in salt Slurpee conditions on the road. Well, tonight I had the opportunity to ski in such conditions, minus the salt. Ever drink a Slurpee, suck all the good stuff out, so all you had left was flavorless slush? That is exactly the material we raced on at Weston tonight. It was raining when I arrived.

I had reservations about even going. It snowed all day at work in Merrimack, NH.  Soggy snow can really suck to ski on. But I think Weston got more rain than snow, likely a good thing when the temperature is 35F. I applied Fast Wax bronze, a warm temp high fluoro wax. I do not have a riller to add structure to my skis as waxing sage Rob Bradlee recommended. Maybe all those gouges in my rock ski bases would channel some of the water away.

Warming up, I was pleasantly surprise by how fast conditions actually were, probably the fastest conditions I've been on this season. My skis seemed faster than anybody else's on the downhills warming up. I did several laps, but then I thought my skis started getting slower.

I lined up in sixth row next to Marv Wang, one of my nemesis' on skis. He is easy to mark in his IBC colors.  We side-skirted Mt Weston the first lap, but somebody still managed to biff right in front of me. Then it was a major cluster of people trying to get around with no shortage of ski and pole entanglement. It was my worst start here ever, I think. My peer group was gone.

On the second lap after things thinned out, I started picking people off. I could see Marv way up there. I noticed my skis were getting grippy on the descents and people were passing me. How can this be with less than 10k on my wax? I still made progress on Marv, but the rest of the group I normally hang with was gone.

Lap three was spent picking off about three more guys, just barely. Each time I passed a guy, I had a drafter for a while. It wasn't until the last 500m or so did I draw a gap and clinch my position. Marv finished just a couple seconds ahead of me. Haven't seen results yet. Probably finished around 20-25th position. The race went 5.3km and took around 16 minutes.  Talking with Colin after the race, apparently structure can make a pretty big difference in these conditions, more important than wax in fact. He skied a blistering pace using an aggressive structure.

Post mortem analysis of GPS data confirmed my suspicions. My skis got progressively slower with each lap, not just in the race, but for the whole evening. My fastest descents were on the first couple laps warming up at an easy pace. The descents of my last racing lap peaked at about 3-5mph slower than warmup laps, not even breaking 20mph. Don't know what to make of that. Too warm of a wax and it wore off right away in the icy slurry? Cheap Fast Wax when I should buy some Swix or Toko HF? Maybe my bases need a refresh grind. Most of the original grind structure is gone in the binding area, and maybe this glazed over look doesn't hold much wax anymore.

Regardless of result, I got a superb workout. 16 minutes at the very cusp of hurling can't be had any other way this time of year. The conditions never got slow, just slower for me. I skied a long time after the race, focusing on areas that seem to hurt me in the race. The really steep punchy climbs were one. I seem to get bogged down in deep slushy stuff, where other skiers I worked so hard to pass on the flats delicately scooted back past me. I finished the evening with 26.8km in 1.6hrs with 1455ft of climbing (on a golf course!). Well worth the trip down from Cow Hampshire.

Heading home in my endorphin induced haze, I just had to turn some AM talk radio on. Seems the whole country was tuned in to the Mass election. The evil empire to my south just became a less evil.

Six Hours on Snow

Another typical January weekend for me. Saturday DaveP and I hit Waterville Valley. Reports on the ground said conditions were bleak. Neither Dave nor I liked the prospects of additional driving and costs to go all the way up to Bretton Woods. We have season passes for Waterville after all. There seemed to be a disconnect between the WV's website conditions and third party observations saying there was little snow. We decided chance it anyway. The worst that could happen would be getting stuck doing repeats on Tripoli Rd. Actually, that wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Tipoli Rd is often the first to open in the fall and last to close in the spring. It always has good snow.

We found conditions to be quite good actually, on the north end. Only a couple spots near the bottom of Livermore shown a stone or two. Everything else was 100% good to go. We did a Cascade Brook/Upper Snows double climb. I started a few minutes ahead of Dave and we somehow missed each other around the loop at the bottom. The temp had risen into the 30's, and I was sweating pretty good. I went through my water bottle very quickly. It figures I got locked out of Dave's car. There was no way I was going to ski at that pace for three hours on one water bottle. Yeah, I bought one of those water bottle belt thingies. Now I was regretting it. With my Camelbak, I could have skied three hours without stopping.

I caught up with Dave at the top of the Tripoli Rd climb, on the verge of bonking 2+ hours into the ski. I couldn't get back down to the car to retrieve my other bottle with Gatorade mix fast enough. Conditions had slowed considerably as the sun softened everything up, but I still managed to go 32mph down Tripoli. Heading back out to do the Osceola climb, I had reached that point where I slow down, and Dave reached that point where he knows he can put the screws to me. And he did. We did a couple laps around Moose Run/Wicked Easy, and I couldn't stay with him. Not that I ever put the screws to him on a bike climb.

I was deep into a bonk cave when we finished with 44km in 2.8hrs skiing time and just over 3000ft of climbing. That one took way more out of me than it should've. Great workout though, and a great day to be in the woods.


Earlier in the week I had high hopes of riding on the Cape. But the snow didn't melt fast enough, and I suspected with frost in the ground, a semi-thawed surface would be a sloppy mess anyway. It got cold enough in my parts to re-freeze the crust. I decided to head up to Massabesic Lake near Manchester early and see how long I could ride snow machine trails until rising temps softened them up.

Massabesic Lake lower, Tower Hill Pond upper left,

squigly Fireline Trail upper center

Starting out like the FOMBA Turkey Burner, I did a big loop around the lake. The riding was quite good. Hiked on only trails were rock hard but uber bumpy. Snow machine only traffic left a crunch surface that require considerable work to maintain any kind of speed, but was comfortably doable. I was curious to see if there had been any traffic on the FOMBA singletrack. I popped in near the Fireline trail. No bike tracks, but the trail appeared to be well packed by snowshoe traffic. I gave it a try. It rode quite nicely. Only a couple of the steepest bits forced me to dismount. It was all work though, all the time. It took me 45 minutes to cover this 3+ mile trail. I probably rode 97% of it. Well worth it. I was probably the first person to ride it this year.

Still 6-8" of snow in the woods at Fireline trail

Fireline pops out on doubletrack, groomed by the local snow machine club. It passes the FOMBA Woodpecker singletrack, which was not packed with snowshoe traffic. It looked like a rider attempted it but turned around 20ft in. Same with Hemlock Trail a bit further down. I wondered if any of the other 10 or so FOMBA trails were rideable. Maybe I lucked out. Fireline was barely rideable as I finished. The sun was rapidly softening things up.

I next went up to Tower Hill Pond to ride a lap of the old Watershed Wahoo course. This would all be on groomed snow machine trails with some climbs. Much of it was packed down to ice or even bare dirt in places. It was easier to ride in places than in summer.

People were ice fishing on Tower Hill Pond. I've had this idea for a long time to write something on a lake with my GPS track. This was a perfect opportunity. I zoomed in on the screen so I could more clearly see my "popcorn trail." I used this to navigate a track of my wife's name. And yes, when I got home and zoomed in on the track, she was impressed. I said I was thinking about her during my ride. The fishermen must have thought I was whacked.

Thinking about my sweetie while riding. Actual GPS track while riding.

Note scale to houses in image, then look at first photo above to see

where on the pond this is.

I rode 26 miles, nearly all of it on snow and off-road, in 3.0 hours. I tried to put a cap on intensity, but riding in snow often doesn't let you do that. Nearly six hours on snow this weekend left me a bit ragged. One day to rest before hitting Weston on Tuesday, if this rain coming down right now changes over to snow anytime soon.