What I like about New England

What I like about New England is that I can go from this at my home

to this 90 minutes north in the White Mountains

and to this 90 minutes south on Cape Cod in the same weekend.

Chances are pretty good that somewhere not too far away it won't suck for something you enjoy doing outside. Other than slow, soggy snow, it was a marvelous day to be out in brilliant spring conditions at Waterville Valley on Saturday. I had planned to hit Jackson, a place I've yet to ski, but my new bike frame came in and I had to pick it up nearby in Plymouth.

As I've been fortunate to do a few times this winter, I hit the Cape for some bare dirt riding at the Trail of Tears on Sunday. The trails weren't perfect, as there is still a lot of tree debris from hurricane Sandy and other recent storms, but the workout obtained was brutal.

Most weekends this winter were long ski/long trail ride combos. This duel packs a potent one-two cardio punch.  The soggy snow on Saturday was especially taxing, requiring almost as much energy expenditure to go down some hills as going up. This is how Dave felt after summiting Upper Osceola.

I was tempted to flop on the ground gasping for air too. The ski season could be coming to an abrupt end for me. I had planned to do the Sugarloaf Marathon this weekend, but a roof over our heads trumped those plans. We lost numerous shingles from our roof in a recent windstorm. Our house is <16yrs old, and all the shingles are curling up and cracking off. I can't believe we haven't developed leaks yet. I have a roofing contractor coming Friday and Saturday to replace the roof. I can't leave Cathy here to deal with that while I'm skiing laps in upstate Maine.

The following weekend, Brett, Arik and I are off to North Carolina for a week of "spring training." How much training really goes on at spring training camps? Maybe our wives and significant others don't really understand the nature of spring training camps. Back in Michigan, come deer hunting season, pretty much every breathing male heads to "deer camp" in far away places of the forest. The cover story says deer camp is a week of reconnecting with nature, male bonding, maybe even bringing home some meat for the table. What really goes on is a week of debauchery. What happens at deer camp stays at deer camp. I'm not saying cycling spring training camps are weeks of debauchery, heck, I don't even drink. Sometimes I think they are more about just getting away with the boys (or girls) than jump-starting fitness for the new season. I certainly look forward to hitting the highest peaks east of the Mississippi.

Winter Project

Seeing it still looks a lot like winter outdoors, I'm not to late to dive into a winter bike project. Slade at Rhino Bike Works hooked me up with a Santa Cruz Tallboy LTC frame. The LT stands for long-travel, the C for carbon. Several long-travel 29ers are showing up on the market in 2013. I had my eye on the Niner RIP 9 RDO, but they aren't scheduled to ship until this spring. The new Tallboy was in stock.

I was skeptical of the whole 29er thing when they first popped on the scene. I reluctantly bought a hardtail. I didn't much care for the handling characteristics at first. You have to learn to ride big wheels differently. I even once said full suspension 29ers made no sense.

Now here I am, not only buying a 29er dualie, but one with 5+ inches of travel front and rear. Should feel like riding the sofa through the woods.  So what do I like about the Santa Cruz frame? For one, it is very light. It actually weighs exactly its claimed 5.5 pounds (2.5kg).  That is frame, shock and rear axle. The frame utilizes a 142mm x 12mm thru-axle. This "standard" seems to be gaining acceptance. The bike will have slightly relaxed geometry compared to my 26" Titus Racer-X. That with big wheels and another inch of travel should make riding Harold Parker less daunting.

The build kit is on order. I struggled mightily with wheel selection. Most of my bikes have either Shimano factory wheels or custom wheels with Shimano hubs. I really like Shimano hubs. They are old school with loose ball bearings. All you need to service the hubs are cone nut wrenches. You can keep the hubs finely tuned with no play, and it is easy to repack the bearings. They last essentially forever if you maintain them.

Shimano XTR hubs come only in their proprietary CenterLoc rotor attachment design. I prefer Hayes brakes and don't like having to buy additional adapters that add cost, weight and clutter to a bike build. Shimano CenterLoc rotors interfere with Hayes calipers.  Thus my struggle. Do I abandon the most easily serviced hubs in favor of industry standard 6-bolt rotor attachment? I've had bad bearing experiences with other hubs, especially Easton, and also Mavic's with the free-hub bushing. I opted to go with Hope Pro 2 EVO hubs. They are reasonably priced, weigh only a little more than XTR, and the hub can be broken down without any special tools should a cartridge bearing need to be replaced. The Hope's will be laced to Stan's Arch EX rims with Wheelsmith 2.0/1.7/2.0 double butted spokes. Not very light, but I've proven this build to work very well for me on my 29er hardtail. Reliability trumps grams any day in my book. I probably won't be racing this bike anyway.

I also struggled with fork selection. I'm a big fan of Fox forks, having early early years problems with Rock Shox forks. SRAM owns the brand now, so maybe Rock Shox is a solid brand. The cheapest Fox product for this frame cost nearly $1000. I just could see spending that much on a fork. The Rock Shox Revelation was more than $200 cheaper and weighed half a pound less. It is not as beefy, with smaller 32mm stanchions. Fox uses 34mm stanchions. We'll see how it goes. I still run a Rock Shox SID fork on my winter beater bike. It must be 10yrs old and I haven't had to put air in in for about 2yrs. Bushings are loose though.

I opted for a 2x10 drivetrain. Hope I like it. All my other MTBs are 3x9 drivetrains.  With big wheels, a 38t big ring is the same as a 42t big ring on a 26" bike. I do give up a bit on the low end with a 24" ring. A 36t cassette helps make up for it. Many outfits are blowing out Shimano XT gear right now, as much as 50% off. Comparing XT sale prices with near full price on top-of-the-line XTR, it was about a third the cost. Gram savings just weren't worth the extra cost. I'd be spending something like $5 per gram saved. That exceeds my threshold, even for a race bike.

Much of the remainder of the build kit is stuff I use and trust. Thomson stem and post. Easton CNT riser bar. Hayes Stroker brakes. Could be a couple weeks before all the stuff comes in. More photos will be posted when complete.

Otis: Hair of the Dog

A ski marathon will leave you feeling a bit hungover the next morning. Especially after the elation of your fastest finish yet wears off. I needed to get a long ride in on Sunday. The way it already is, our North Carolina spring training trip will surely come down on me like a dump truck load of granite. It was snowing lightly when I got up Sunday, and there was crud on the road. It would get too warm to ride local snowmobile trails. That left only one option: The Cape!

The last of the snow melted this past week on the Cape. Reports were coming back that Otis was dry, but not so clear. Seems considerable debris from the hurricanes and storms over the last few months are still being cleaned up.

There were quite a few cars at the usual Otis parking spot. I pull in, got out, and Carl DeVincent was there to greet me. He told me Shawn and Andy were running late. Hmm, why was he telling me that? Did he know something I did not? I hadn't planned to meet or ride with anybody and just wanted to nurse my race damaged body for a few hours. Carl assumed Shawn invited me to their ride. When the other two arrived, I learned that none of them knew the trail system very well. I felt like I was getting corralled into leading a group ride, which freaked me out a little. I know how those guys ride... fast, and over everything.

With some reservation and lack of sound judgement, I decided to ride with them, maybe show them the lay of the land and split off at some point. I felt better than expected heading out along Hwy 151 and set a pace I hoped wouldn't be too pedestrian for the others. It felt downright hard to me, but I raced hard three hours the day before, so it was really hard to translate how that might have felt to them. Shawn was always right on my wheel, so that little demon in my head says "not hard enough."

Many entertaining features at Otis.

It's been a couple years since I rode Otis, and due to the density of interconnecting trails, a lot of it became foggy in my head. Add to that the expansion of the national cemetery into riding terrain, it threw me into a recursive loop that took some doing to get out of.

Hurricane Sandy debris no doubt deprived Andy part of his valve stem.

Stan's don't work too good for that.

A liberal dose of climbing was had. Not so much deliberately, but aimlessly wandering trying to find "that trail" I remember from two years ago. I'm sure Shawn enjoyed some of those climbs on his rigid singlespeed;) He was schooling me everywhere else.  A couple climbs, nobody cleaned. Might have been one or two only I cleaned. Not sure where my kilojoules were coming from. There were many, many VOmax efforts.

New swing on "Mt ZiG"

There are several areas with SUV sized rocks to play on. I'm amazed that Andy and Shawn would blind faith launch over some of them, not having inspected the back side first. Shawn later quipped on Strava why anybody would need a long travel 29er when he was killing it on a rigid singlespeed. Yeah, I have a Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc on order, a 5" travel 29er carbon frame. I get killed on my 26" Titus riding with others on 29ers at Harold Parker. At Otis, I felt I was doing ok on my 29er hardtail.

Confidence. No gears or suspension for Shawn.

Contemplation. I wouldn't have even made it as far as Andy did.

All the peakiness put Carl into a spot of trouble around the 3hr mark. I was pretty much cooked too. We worked our way back to the cars after having covered about 75% of the trails at Otis. I logged a considerable amount of intensity during the ride, probably quality stuff. Definitely had more fun than had I poked around by myself.

In medieval times, it was believed you could treat a rabid dog bite by placing hair of the dog that bit you in the wound. I doubt they had much success with that. Today, the expression is associated with alcohol hangovers, consuming more of the same toxin that made you feel awful in the first place, to feel better. Does that work for training too? In moderation, I believe it often does, aka a recovery ride or run. Three hours of anaerobic climbs on the Cape hardly constitutes a recovery ride. It was worth it though. Recover another day.

Rangeley Loppet 2013

I seemed to be trapped in an abusive relationship with endurance events. My forte is anything under an hour or so, yet I keep participating in 3+ hour events. In fact, I just signed up for the full distance D2R2 ride again this year. Why I keep going going back is beyond me.

It's been a couple years since I've done a ski marathon. In fact, the last 50km race I did was the Rangeley Lakes Loppet in 2011. Now that we've had a real winter, I can't let the season pass without participating in one of these sufferfests on snow. I ski only twice a week or so, but most workouts were of pretty high quality. My form continues to improve gauged on performance at Weston.

I've been taking very few rest days this winter. When I ran, I usually ran hard. When I biked, I did intervals midweek or went long on a weekend ride. When I skied, I skied at hurl threshold at Weston or until bodily breakdown at Waterville. No rest. This was catching up to me in ways I have not experienced until now. I was getting overuse pain in many joints. Most notable was severe pain behind kneecaps when going down stairs first thing in morning. Runners, cyclists and skiers often get this. Rest is needed to prevent this from becoming a more serious injury. This past week I made my best attempt at some recovery. I ran only 5k on Monday and Wednesday at a fairly pedestrian pace. Tuesday was just too nice to not go out for longer ride, so I went out for over 30 miles at lunch and hit the infamous Chestnut Hill pretty hard. Oops. Thursday and Friday were real rest days. I haven't taken back-to-back complete rest days since when... when I broke my ankle in 2010? To make matters worse, work is stressful right now with a lot of extra hours. Some nights I get only 5hrs sleep. I need closer to 8hrs. Training hard, no rest days, lack of sleep weeks at a time take a toll after a while. So backing down even a little made a pretty dramatic improvement in how I felt by Saturday.

I rarely sleep well for these things. I desperately needed a good nights sleep, having slept less than 5hrs the night before. My ski partner Brett is a pretty solid snorer, so I know to bring my sleep noise machine along. Unfortunately, my idea of how much noise was needed for me to suppress his noise was incompatible with his ability to sleep. My new machine has all sorts of sounds, like waterfalls, rain, wind, waves, even cities and trains. Go figure. I think the setting that worked best for Brett was wind. It had lower frequency content and I didn't have to turn it up as loud to mask him. I actually slept pretty well.

Nice view from our sleeping digs at the Rangeley Inn.

Forecasts for Saturday were all over the place. Lows from 20-28F, highs from 32-39F, none to 2" of snow, maybe mixed precip, etc. I went with the Toko wax recommendation, which erred on the cold side with Toko HF red. I don't have Toko Jetstream pure fuoro, so I used Star F1 fuoro top coat, something suitable up to 32F (pure fluorocarbon wax is more durable and has lower friction on wet snow, but is extremely expensive). I rilled with the Toko red structure tool (rilling puts microscopic groves in your skis to channel water away so it doesn't slow you down as much). When we saw the temp only got down to 27F overnight, I thought I was screwed, as the wax I used is for much colder snow and it was only going to get warmer.

More snow than what they know what to do with at the venue.

At the venue, Brett and I were amazed at how much snow was there. I'd say about 3ft of snow on the ground. The NOHRSC website backs this up, showing the venue solidly in the 30-40" depth range. I warmed up on my rock skis, which I did not wax. Just 3km to check out the conditions and get a little blood flowing. The course was meticulously groomed and quite firm, despite getting a lot of snow this week. Speed felt a little sluggish. Then I put on my race skis just before lining up. Yeah, that was more like it! Not blazing fast like in 2010, but I'll take it. This race was not going to be a slog.

Brett was carrying on before the race about how it was going to suck. I'm used to this before ski races, bike races or hard training rides. Now Brett is a good friend of mine, but I have to dole out a little harassment on this topic, especially since he always kicks my ass at this distance.

Brett-isms:
- I'm still tired from the Birkie (possible)
- The snow is soft, it's going to be really slow
- My skis feel really slow
- I feel a little sick
- I might switch to the 25k instead

I heard all these in the hour leading up the race start.  Translation: He's ready to open up a can of whoop-ass.  Yeah, I think we all do this from time-to-time. Some are a little more practiced at it than others. I'm no doubt guilty once in a while.

Ok, the race. I lined up third row, Brett in second a lane or two over. We must have been at least 15 across. They started all 25k and 50k skaters at once, at least 150 skiers I'd say. Yee-haw! Just meters after you can start skating out of the stadium area, the course goes downhill and necks down to 10ft wide. I bet 100 of those skiers wanted the hole-shot. Gun goes off, I double-pole decently, then things go wild. It turned into a major phuster cluck going into the woods. Somebody yelled out "get ready to play roller-derby!" I didn't see anybody go down, but if somebody when down up front, a hundred skiers would have piled up.

Less than 1km later, we come to a narrow bridge with abrupt upward transition on other side. The pace came to a stop. I'm convinced after doing these things for a number of years now that college girls are the most aggressive and physical. There was clearly nowhere to go, no way to get through, yet several girls played bumper cars well into the middle of the pack of congestion. I had no less then three girls ski up on my skis, fore and aft. It took a good while for everybody to get untangled. WTF girls, there's no need for that. Brett always tells me I sell myself short by starting a little further back than he does, and this was a case in point.

It took another 5km for things to start thinning out. I was going pretty hard, but I got swarmed at the start and then passed by more at that bridge, so I had a lot of slow traffic in front of me on the first climbs. Brett was going bye-bye, and there was nothing I could do about it until I got through traffic.

I carried one large water bottle with strong Gatorade in it and two Gu's stapled to my water belt. At the second feed zone, I decide to go for a Gu. Dang if I didn't drop the stupid thing. There was no food on the course, only HEED sport drink. Hmmm, 50k on a Gu and one water bottle? I've been training with less food and water intake, so this was going to put that to an extreme test.

On the long climb half way through the first lap, I could see Brett and the gang I typically hang with at Weston, just two minutes up. That was the damage done due to a botched start. Could I recover that in the next 35km or so?

Coming through the start-finish, I was pleased to see about 1:23 for my first 25km. Barring cramping, crashing or breaking equipment (sometimes all three happen to me at the same time), a sub-3hr marathon was virtually assured. Even though the course would get chewed up and be slower on the second lap, I thought a PR marathon was possible. That became my goal. Forget Brett. If I skied my race, I would do well.

I skied by myself almost the entire second 25km. I passed three other masters skiers early in the lap. At about the 30km mark, a shot was fired across the cramping bow. Uh-oh. It wasn't a full-on spasm, but those twinges I get 10-15 minutes before full spasms set in. They usually start in inner thigh or hip flexors and take over my legs. Then it dawned on me. Since my last marathon two years ago, I've greatly upped core work, namely push-ups and sit ups. I needed to focus on using more of my upper body to propel myself and save the legs. I still ski like such a cyclist. Even if I totally destroyed my upper body, I could still finish the race. The reverse is not as true. I committed to V2ing on grades I would normally V1. This made my triceps burn.

I told myself if I could summit the high point of the course with about 10k to go without cramping, I would really crank it up for the last 10k. Apparently my focus on upper body helped. I did not cramp. I even caught a glimpse of Brett still a couple minutes up on the long, straight climb. I might have even been gaining on him. This gave me a second wind. I was flying for the last 10k.

I crossed the line in 2:49, just two minutes back from Brett. My second 25k lap took 1:26, only three minutes slower than my first, and my second lap was a couple minutes faster than Brett's second lap.  We both had our fastest 50k finishes ever and were pretty psyched.  I'll link to the results here when they are posted. Had I not botched the start, the race would probably have been very different for both of us. I think I would have ended up on the ugly end of that outcome. Regardless, this was my best marathon race to date. I just may have to do the Sugarloaf Marathon in two weeks. That is the last weekend before a North Carolina cycling trip, which is sure to kill me. We plan to do the Georgia 6-gaps ride on that trip. At least Brett is in the same under-trained boat I'm am. A third rider joining us has been pouring on the miles lately.


We really lucked out with the weather. Freezing point is tricky to wax for, even for skaters. It snowed a negligible amount during the race and very little over night. We hit some light rain on the drive back. The skis Chris Li hand picked for me are awesome. I gave him the unbroken Atomic World Cup ski from the pair I really liked, and he matched it up to a new pair of Solomon's. They felt perfect on that course. The wax was spot-on too, I think. My skis were at least as fast as everybody else's. It's going to be hard to let this ski season end.

WV Secret Decoder Ring

It's no secret that avid Nordic skiers have become disenfranchised with the Waterville Valley Nordic Center the last couple years. Grooming has become inconsistent in multiple areas, including the quality, frequency and reporting of grooming. When Mike Seeger ran the place, you could count on a quality product. When they said the trails were groomed, they were groomed to perfection. Now, it seems, you need a secret decoder ring to interpret grooming reports. I'll get to that in a moment.

After a punishing ride Saturday, 4+ hours in the saddle with nearly 5000ft of climbing, I was pretty beat getting up on Sunday. I needed a long ski, as it was my last training opportunity before the Rangeley Lakes Loppet the following weekend. I knew the weather would be a wildcard, with storm "Q" hanging over the northeast (The Weather Channel folks are idiots for naming every minuscule disturbance that moves across the country in winter).

Unfortunately, I timed my departure for WV at the worst possible time. A heavy squall moved in that spanned from Boston to the mountains. I suspect it was coming down 3-4" per hour with big wet golf-ball sized flakes. No way was the state keeping up with that. At one point, the highway necked down to a single doubletrack where I thought my car was going to start scraping bottom. Progress was painfully slow. A lot slower for others who ended up 100ft off the road. Always SUVs.

That wasn't the worst of it. In Concord, I got stuck behind an echelon of plows. 22mph was my average progress all the way to Laconia. What takes 15 minutes took better part of an hour. Of course I was bullshit. I want it both ways, to have clean roads AND to not get stock behind the plows giving me clean roads.

As I reached Plymouth, I got out from under the snow squall and the roads were just wet. I had already killed an extra hour to get that far. It was by far my slowest drive ever up to the mountains. Didn't have anybody with me to talk with either. My ski partner bailed on me. So I thought the worst was behind me, snowing lightly now, so it should be great skiing...

Checking in with the Nordic center, they verbally confirmed all of the North End was groomed that morning and the groomer was now working on the South End trails. Great, I thought, I'll just ski over to the north end, as I know what "grooming in progress" means from prior experience.

The trails had some powder accumulation since the early morning groom, which was fine. The moist snow actually had nice glide quality, but slow due to softness. I reached my favorite climb, Tripoli Rd, to see it untouched since the day before. Son of a bitch! I'm sure the skiers just around the corner heard my vocalized frustration. The snow was boot deep and completely unskateable. I asked the couple coming back from Moose Run if Upper Osceola was groomed. Nope. They too thought everything was supposed to be groomed.

So I turned around, went over to the Livermore side. Surely Upper Snows and Cascade would be groomed, right? Got to the top of Livermore and nope, grooming stopped. I was livid. I spent almost three hours on the road to ski a random smattering of uninteresting trails? I came to get a workout, so I had to make do with what was there. I dropped down Lower Snows and then doubled all the way back. Nothing bigger than a 300ft climb was to be had. The 500, 600 and two 800ft climbs all were not groomed since the day before.

Given the string of disappointments with Waterville grooming lately, I created a decoder for their grooming reports.

WV Secret Decoder Ring:
Groomed - It probably was at one time. Maybe last April. Could be rutted ice or boot deep powder.
Grooming In Progress - None of the trails you want to ski will be groomed yet. They won't be before you have to leave either.
Skate Groomed - Single pass with a snowmobile groomer. Expect to be competing for space with the classic tracks.
100% Open - The groomer made at least a cursory appearance in that part of the trail system.

If I classic skied, I no doubt could come up with a few more. It is troubling that the price went up and the quality went down. There are other places to ski. An extra 30 minutes drive reaches Bretton Woods, and they have showers with fresh towels for the same price.  Maybe I'll invest in a season pass for Weston next year.  Fortunately I got a decent endorphin fix from my ski. The slow conditions made for hard work all the time, including the descents. My attitude was suitably adjusted for the drive home, which was a smooth cruise.

Reverse Bike-Ski Weekend

In prime ski season, I usually prefer to ski first on weekends, then use any remaining fitness crumbs the next day for riding. It's a solid one-two body blow. Nothing escapes unscathed. Skiing usually trashes the body more for cycling than riding does for skiing. Not sure why. But I like to get my best workouts on skis this time of year. The body gets a bit of a break from riding, and 50km ski marathons are less onerous if you actually train a little for them.

Sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate. This past Saturday would have been a fine day to ski, better than Sunday, but Sunday looked like a total crap day to ride. I'd much rather ski in a snowstorm than ride in one.

On Saturday, Dave and I stayed local for a long snow machine trail ride. Club websites were listing trail conditions as poor - icy, bare dirt, not groomed. These are perfect conditions for studded tire mountain biking. Many of the snow machine trails are open only in the winter months when snow cover is on the ground. They pass over many parcels of private land. With poor conditions, maybe very few sledders will be out.

We started at Sliver Lake State Park in Hollis. On my way there, I stopped up at a local business to buy the area snowmobile trail map. You will not find any info like this on the web.  I eyed a route that would take us through Brookline, touch into Milford, skirt along the Mason town line before coming back into Hollis. I hadn't ridden much of this yet. I had no idea how hilly it would be or how long it would take. I was hopping to get in about 4hrs riding, as I hadn't ridden longer than an hour in three weeks.

It was the first time in a while riding on hard ice on steep terrain for both Dave and I. Takes a while to trust the studs. The sled skis left deep ruts in the ice. These were quite treacherous if you got caught in them.

Dave approaching vista on Birch Hill in Hollis.

The route took us up to the vista on Birch Hill before climbing it again from another side to the summit. The two mile descent to Rt 13 was a riot, although I think I apprehension strained my sphincter on the sketchy icy conditions.

Next up was the Mile Slip climb, new to me, which was nice after the long descent. Lots more ice bombing descent followed as we headed south toward Brookline.

Near summit of Big Bear. 

After crossing Mason Rd, another climb ensued. Not sure what the formal name is, but there used to be a ski area on this one called Big Bear Mtn. It is hardly a mountain, but there was a nice vista from the art institute at the top. Some pretty wild sculptures about too. The Big Bear descent was treacherous, basically down an alpine ski slope fall-line, I bet at least 30% grade. I started to lose control of my speed on icy sections and aimed for the crusty snow edge. It was off-camber and my front wheel promptly washed out. I manage to eject without hitting the deck.

This caused Dave to giggle and heckle me, which promptly caused him to totally lose control. Next thing I see him airborne right next to me looking for a soft landing in the snow. I might have peed a little laughing at that one. Neither of us remounted right there, opting for a less sketchy spot a little further down.

Pick a soft spot to land.

This was crazy steep and just enough ice to be skidding studs on it.

It appears some of the trails on the map are no more, so our planned route got moved to the Brookline Rail Trail to take us back to the Birch Hill area. Now it was time to climb the 2mi descent we came down earlier. After hitting several few hundred foot climbs at threshold to super-threshold pace, my legs were feeling pretty noodly. Of course, Dave wasn't slowing down at all.

Earlier in the ride I wondered if Potanipo Lake ice was safe enough for us to ride across.

Looked like a redneck convention. Shanties, grills and trucks everywhere.

As we came back to Silver Lake, the snow and ground were softening up. The temp was approaching 40F. Fortunately, the sun wasn't out, or things would have gotten really messy. Dave had to get back. I wanted to check the loop out on the east side of Rt 122. I thought it was about 3mi and flat. I was terribly wrong. It was closer to six miles and nothing but double-digit grade hills. With the softening snow, several short hike-a-bikes were required. I definitely buried myself with those extra 40 minutes of riding. I needed it though. Turned out to be a fantastic day for an ice bike ride, really about as good as snow machine trails get, assuming you have studs. We did not encounter a single snowmobile.

The windblown orchard above Silver Lake. Birch Hill in distance.

Sunday's ski was not nearly as successful, a story I'll share if I have time on Monday.

Hero Snow

It seems many cyclists are cursing the snow this winter. It's not like we've been having an epic winter. Just a couple major snowstorms so far. It does take a long time for a two foot dump to melt though. Roads are messy and trails are unrideable for big chunks of time.

I've learned to embrace the snow. My primary midweek workout for for the last few weeks has been to hit the Tuesday night sprint race at Weston. I was bumming this Tuesday as rain overtook New England. Just before the cutoff time, I called Brett who lives not far from Weston to get an on-the-ground report. Weather radars can lie, you know. Nope. It was really raining. Then I recalled skiing at Weston once in the rain and it wasn't too bad. So I called the ski shop to get up-to-minute snow report. Not glazed over. Hmm, I took a leap of faith, changed, and headed down. I'll ski slushy corn snow any time over glazed hardpack like last week.

When I got to Weston, it was raining lightly and cars were starting to stream in. Clipping into skis, I asked somebody that looked like they were just wrapping up how it was. He looked at his buddy and said "possibly the best groomed ever!" I thought yeah, right. I pushed off to find the course in pristine condition. The full width was perfectly planarized, barely touched corduroy, slushy corn snow but quite fast. This was hero snow. You could not make a mistake on it. Very forgiving. And as a bonus, the full course was groomed and lit, including the flats all the way out to Rt 128.  Now only if I had fresher legs...

After a solid warm-up, I lined up for the race. We were doing three laps for 9.6km. The rain and humidity rendered my glasses more nuisance than help. I never skied without glasses before. Since the course was flawless, I just might get away with it.

With a smaller group than usual, I seeded in a very forward position, third row. After our neutral "NASCAR" start, the race goes live and ballistic. Apparently I didn't warm up enough, or I was much more tired than I thought. I got swarmed and just like that I was 20-something back.

Immediately, gaps started to form. Nooooo! The group I thought I was entitled to be with was going bye-bye. I had some work to do. I came there for a workout, after all. I popped out of the slipstream and chased the next group fragment down, caught them, recovered a little, and repeated. This required huge kilojoule expenditure.

By lap two, I caught my peer group. In it were Maddy, Joe Brenner, Robert, Mike and I think Nate. I thought if I could just hang with this group, I'd do ok. I started with these people and burned a lot of matches to catch back up to them during the first lap.

We all took turns at the front, but Maddy spent a lot of time toeing the line. A few times Mike let a gap open up behind Maddy. I came around to shut it down, but Mike would zip back up, leaving me out of the slipstream. Joe was more than happy to let me flounder off to the side. The slinky effect in the line was pretty severe, as I think everybody had trouble holding Maddy's "wheel."

Then on the third lap, Mike let a sizeable gap open between him and Maddy. I thought that was it, she was gone. But I bolted, and this time Mike wasn't able to respond. Joe didn't either and got stuck behind Mike. Perfect, Mike can block for me without even knowing it.

I went deep into the red to catch Maddy. Maybe she punched it too. The pace slowed a bit with about half a lap (one mile) to go. Joe was was bringing the others with him precariously close. If he caught us, it would be game over. I came around to set pace for a bit. Even at 12-15mph, it is amazing how much harder it is to lead on skis, plus you can't just tuck in the draft on the downhills, expending zero energy. I petered out and got over so Maddy could lead again. It wasn't happening. Now Joe and the others were no more than three seconds back.

I continued to set pace for the remainder of the final lap. Chasers were never more than five seconds back. I was dying. I never put myself so close to the hurl threshold for so long at Weston. I did not want Joe to catch me, and I could tell he wanted it badly. No rest on the final descent before the finish. All work. There was no margin. I expected Maddy to blow by me, but in my determination to hold Joe off, I just edged her out at the line. Joe was only three seconds back.  I think I had to wait more than a minute before I had enough composure to give the score keeper my time and name. Race went just over 29 minutes, and I snagged a top-10 finish. Woo-hoo! A few of the fast guys weren't there though, but John Sakalowsky was, and I was a respectable 15% back from him.



It rained lightly the whole time, and low parts of the course were filling up with puddles of water by the time I left. I nearly had the course to myself as I skied three more laps in the rain. It was so hypnotic to V2 for 30+ minutes straight after the race. I bet that will be it for the natural cover section. I was psyched to experience a probably once this season ski at Weston. That made for three seriously hard workouts on snow in four days. Other than a bit of biking in Saturday's triathlon at Weston, the bike is almost becoming a distant memory. What have I become?