Training Log Archive: Ari-o

The skiing yesterday was so good I wanted to do it again. Skied up and down and round and round (staying away from the thin areas) and it was just gorgeous. Took lots of photos and a video, too.

And then because I have to run, I went on a run. But unlike most runs, I was not constrained by vagaries such as bridges. Ran down Magazine, across Magazine Beach and then across the river. Got to the BU sailing pavilion and decided the other side looked nice, then ran diagonalwise under the Harvard Bridge (ice under bridge was confirmed as quite thick) and then back on the Longfellow. Not that fast, but there was some postholing.

Wow.

The crust skiing on the river is amazing. It's really, really frozen. There are friggin' truck tracks out there. It's just astonishing that there haven't been armies of people out because the media has done a really good job of convincing people that water doesn't freeze when it's cold. In Minnesota there would be groomers and ice shacks and luminaries.

So we had it to ourselves. Alex, Ed and I skied up and down, went through the lagoons (which are really frozen), discussed Ed drilling down to test the thickness (probably 8") and had no run ins with Mass State Police or DCR.

And no one fell in.

Got too much publicity about the Crust Birkie, State Police Tweeted at me, DCR found my office phone number and called me, and we called the whole thing off.

But still went. And there was a DCR Ranger there who saw Ed skiing and came and found us at the alternate start (we probably should have gone to Magazine Beach). And I argued that there were no signs up and therefore it wasn't illegal, and he said there were, and I said where, and he didn't know, and he'd call state police (and said, about Ed, "I hope he falls in") and Ed skied, and Alex had forgotten her skis, and he texted us that it was good.

And I ran home.

Run to NP

With the stadium fully snowed in, we had a 6k race around the stadium. Why 6k? Probably because the 1200m loop around the Harvard athletic complex times five is 6000m. Kind of a fun distance. I went out reasonably hard but this is not on the menu this week (I'm trying to recover) so went for a nice tempo run. 6:20 for the first mile and last 0.75, 6:40 in the middle. Not too bad considering I had been racing 11 hours before, dehydrated, underfed, etc.

This was amazing.

I walked down to the river after November Project, put on my skis, and set off. Nothing really sketchy except sort of under the BU Bridge, just great crust skiing with an inch of powder on top. A bit drifted past the BU Bridge, but nothing bad. No cracking in the ice, no scary bits, should be fine for a Crust Birkie despite what everyone tells me.

5:30 tomorrow.

Strava track.

Charles crust skiing! So very amazing. Perfect conditions, no ice, plenty of snow, good crust. And, no, with temperatures running 10-15º below normal for the past two months, 15 days in a row below freezing and 35 below 40 in a row, there's plenty of ice. Now, I'm thinking of trying to get enough people together to have a race from Harvard to Charles (and taking the Red Line back).

Thursday?

Run from the T to Weston. T wasn't bad at all today! And running without skis is nice.

Cary was bringing my skis and poles (we split the bag home and Delta lost our luggage so it was delivered yesterday), so I was hanging out in the rental room. He got stuck in traffic, so I was waiting there, and waiting there, and he finally got in at 6:59. On went the boots! Then I ran to grab my skis and realized I still had socks, underpants and shorts tied around my unbroken poles. I ran off to the start taking garments off, and threw them in a pile, and slipped on my skis, and the race went off maybe 20 seconds later.

Adrenaline was up enough that I stayed right with the front group. That and the fact that it was windy and I'd spent enough time drafting in the Birkie that I basically treated it as such. After about two loops my legs said they didn't really want to go hard up a hill and I said to them, "you know what, you're right" and we slowed down together and I held off the folks behind for the rest of the race.

Then it was cold and I went inside and put on clothes.

Then a ski around the loop, and then home.

-10 but wicked sunny out and we were staying on a lake, so let's go out and ski on a lake. Lots of sled tracks but the only other people I saw out were skiers and people returning from winter camping (brr). I guess 8 am on a Sunday is when snowmachiners are all too hungover to ride. Very pleasant, until I turned in to the wind …

First Birkie warm up: a quick job to check out bus logistics (since we had a parking pass).

Second warm up, this time on skis. Then a quick change and bag pack and ready for the races!

Birkie!

Strava Track here, full write-up here. If you skied the Birkie, shoot me a race report (gmail ari.ofsevit) and I'll post it on BirkieGuide.com.

Race highlights:

Soft snow, relatively slow, good skis.
Not too cold.
Started well, but lost time in the first couple km, wasn't able to pass much on power lines.
Skied okay to Timber Trail, lost contact with group ahead but ahead of group behind with two other guys.
Skied with them for ~25k, until the group from behind caught us.
One fall, but stayed with this group, and got ahead of most of it on to the lake.
Bridge fantastic, no morning traffic, great for skiing, spectating.
154th overall.
Drank beer.

See more at BirkieGuide.com!

Nice, slow warm up on and around the Birkie Trail. 3" of new powder to ski in!

Travel and recovery and tapering, and squeezing a week of work in to three days. Did some snow shoveling this morning and went on a 5 minute lunch jog along the river. Then off to Birkie! No cold this year yet (touch wood), prepped skis (blue wax!), and no blizzard to fly in to in Birkieland. Then I have to start running, which will be interested given the four feet of snow on the ground here.

Guys there is so much snow in Boston. The 4' high fence in our back yard is darned near buried, nothing has melted, and the snow piles are ridiculous. My car is properly buried and will not be making an appearance until the after the Birkie at the earliest. It helps that the roads are such a mess that getting to the highways is basically impossible. I'll be on the barely-functioning T, so, hooray?

A few minutes of warm up and cool down.

Worlds. Tempo taper worlds the week before the Birkie. I went out with the lead pack but dropped off pretty quickly; didn't want to break myself. Fell through the second pack and in to the third, nice easy skiing. On the last lap I started pushing V2 on the uphills and passed everyone, and cruised in going fast, but not the usual all-out worlds. Very nice skiing on the tons of soft snow; might be the last powder race before some ice comes out.

After I went off piste down a bunker or something, it was thigh deep.

So, Norway. It's a hell of a society they're running here. Some observations:

* Nothing is open on Sunday. The only thing open is the little Joker convenience-sized stores, run by one person. The goal is to give everyone a day off. So, yeah, you have to plan to buy groceries and such around this, but nearly everyone gets a day off. How nice.

* These little grocery stores? I expected something like a 7/11. But no, it's a downscaled version of a big grocery store. You can get fresh vegetables and pasta and the like, not just candy, chips and soda.

* The people working at these stores (and restaurants and elsewhere) are all well-compensated, so there's no issue of tipping and such. It's done through strong unions. Which everyone seems to support.

* There's a 15% tax of food and 25% on other things. Included in the price. Probably a VAT, I never really found out. And everyone is happy to pay it. Because they have a functioning society and a social safety net.

* One of the things the safety net buys is buses everywhere. Every little town has a bus (or, a buss) which comes by a few times a day. So not everyone needs a car.

* Which is good, because there's something like a 100% excise tax on buying cars (for comparison, sales and excise tax in Massachusetts adds up to 12% over five years, and little thereafter). So most families have one car (if any).

* They also don't salt the roads. Apparently part of the licensing process is to learn to drive in slick conditions. Which you need to figure out.

* Despite sitting on a pile of oil, gas costs $8 a gallon. I've seen about one pickup truck and maybe three large SUVs. It's a country of sedans, hatchbacks and station wagons and the like.

* There's no ADA equivalent here. Lots of little steps, gaps getting on the T-Bane, steep ramps without rest levels and such. Probably makes infrastructure somewhat cheaper, of course.

* But sidewalks get cleared, and if not down to pavement, down to ice with gravel. Apparently in the spring they come around with a vacuum and suck up all the gravel.

* Five weeks vacation. A mandate that you can take 3 weeks in a row in the summer if you want. 7.5 hour days with mandated flexible schedules if you're in an office. People seem happier.

* Everything seems to work. Everyone seems happy. Yeah, the oil helps. But we could learn a bit from the Norwegians about how to run a country. And not just about skiing.

C • Forgot to mention 2

Cold and raw, skiing around to try to get warm. Extra layer today.

Last event: relay. I'd pulled the anchor leg and the goal was to punch all the controls and not lose. Greg came through fine, as did Adrian, so I went out right as the leaders were finishing to ski the course. Fun course today: no huge hills, nothing super scary, and fast, fun conditions.

Word on the street was that we were going down the ravine of death, so I was prepared for that. And we'd seen most of the map before, so it wasn't like it was terra incognita. So Adrian came around, tagged off to me, I had kept the ice from accreting on my map board, and I skied off. Up the big trail and then in to the woods to 1, and then diagonally out to the big trail for the climb to 2. 3 was in an area I'd been to before, so that was a pretty good punch and 4 was also good navigation. Having said that, I'm still not comfortable navigating at speed, but at least not getting lost.

5 was well navigated along the marsh, and I saw someone else but they weren't going where I was, and then a narrow climb up to 6. I got a little lost in to 6 as I had the first time, and a little lost out of it, but navigated well using shortcuts to 7 (lots of short cuts today).

I followed some short cuts to the big trail down towards 8 and reoriented in to the oods, then took a decent route to 9 and then a good route to 10 via the trail that I'd taken in to 8. And then it was time for the luge run of death. As I had been informed, I took off my skis at the second caution sign, and ran. It was great. Loping running downhill on snow I would have been breaking equipment or myself on, didn't miss the corner everyone missed, skis on easily, and up the hill on the other side to 11.

I didn't take a great route to 12 worrying about the esker of death from yesterday, but took a good route out of it. Big trails to 13 but I took a dumb shortcut in to it and had to pause to find it. 14 went well with just a slight hesitation, and then it was down from 15 with speed and alacrity.

The last loop was nubbly stuff in the forest, and I took it slowly to make sure I was going to the right controls in the right order. Punch, punch, punch, punch, stadium, finish. With Alex cheering.

So then I went to download. They held my chip against the sensor, and the guy in the booth looked at me, looked at the computer, looked at me, looked at the computer, and then motioned to another guy. That guy did the same drill: dumb looks at me and the computer. Then a third guy was summoned. This gentleman looked at the computer, and me, and gave the dreaded thumbs down.

What? Great. It turned out, every other team mispunched, or DSQed, and I had to go in to the Red Sone again to find out how I had transgressed. I stood outside tracing the whole map. Went there, went there, went there, etc. THen I went in. Same guy looking at my splits. He looked up and down the list, and then took my chip, and printed out a list, and looked at them, and said "okay, you are good." Wait, what? Apparently there's some Emit backup and they were able to verify the veracity of my punching with it. Well, okay then. Finland and Norway mispunched, but not the good ol' USA.

Of course, we still lost nearly an hour to the Russians.

But it was fun racing, and I'm feeling more comfortable with the trails, and I am not broken, and only one of my skis (and a rock ski at that) is. So, success? Yes, success!

C • Nice going! 3

Off on the East Side again, skittering around narrow trails.

Couple miles of skiing waiting for the race to start.

Ugh, so this happened. Things went well on a macro scale, but pretty crappy on a micro scale. Like, I mostly navigated well, but when I made mistakes, they were painful. If that makes sense. The big takeaway is that I misread a trail overprinted with a circle, missed a punch, and mispunched the whole course. But for the most part I skied well, with some big mistakes costing minutes.

First mistake: out of the start, I followed a very long route to the first control. Now, it's a mass start, and I barely had time to read the map, so by the time I was going I was on the right side of the mass start and needed to make a left. But, an additional issue: I read the map wrong. I missed the obvious route choice and skied probably an extra 300m. Which is why there was no one there when I got there.

Didn't realize that until I read the map later.

Coming in to the first exchange, I forgot to punch the pre-exchange control, but circled back to do so. So another few seconds. I exchanged the map well, though.

The third map was the worst. First, I totally flubbed the map exchange, tossing away my maps and trying to get the first in the map holder with the others still there. Apparently, you're supposed to throw your map away before the exchange, and volunteers will pick it up for you and give it back after the race. I did not know this. So while I'm trying to get the map in the holder, race volunteers, thinking I'm in the lead pack, start pointing me right, towards the final loop. So now I'm lost, because I've been told to go the wrong way, in an orienteering race. It took me quite a bit of time to regain contact and actually find the course.

So I went to 1. Then I went to 3. Well, most of the way to 3, then circled back to go to 2 and then to 3. Then I came through the rest of the course, missed the last control before the stadium, didn't realize it of course, and went for the final lap.

With Greg breathing down my neck.

I beat him through the controls, and rode the last hill well and led in to the stadium. Then after the race I said "well, of course, maybe I mispunched" and got a thumbs down from the official and went to the "Red Zone" (or "Red Sone" as it is spelled here) and was told by a very nice Norwegian man who went through all the controls and said "it is this one, sorry." They are not conversational here.

Oh, well. It wasn't like I was having a stellar race, anyway.

After the race, I wanted to ski on top of the mountain. Everyone else wanted to go tomorrow until it was ascertained that tomorrow was going to be cloudy. Cloudy is bad for the top of the mountain.

So Alex, Stina and Greg joined me today. It was so great. The trails were double-tracked (annoying, but good to see that the art of classic skiing is alive and well in Norway, and not on fishscales, either) so we zigzagged up the maze. The top was beautiful: ski trails as far as the eye could see, mountains in the distance, brilliant sunshine, and skiers dotted along the ski trails in any direction. Hell of a country they're running here.

Then we went down through the maze, which was equally fun. The GoPro video should be good. As should all the pictures.

Then we were tired and went home.

Oh my. We went up to Sjusjoen to ski on the trails there and it was so nice. It was also completely foggy and we couldn't see more than about 50m, but freshly groomed and fast and gorgeous. I could ski here basically forever. We skied out a few k on the Birkebeinerløypa (Birkie Trail, but the real Birkie Trail) and then turned and came back on a loop through more fog, and it was great, and now I want to come back and ski the Birkebeinerrennet and apparently there is always space for foreigners, so, 2016?

Also I am now telling everyone to go ski there. I imagine it's even better if the views are better.

Skiing around the field they had set up as the model. No controls, just some narrow trails to goof around on. Then a quick restroom break, and a good, and off to the start.

Long race. This was heaps and loads of fun. I didn't orienteer really all that well, making a few moderately-sized mistakes, but skiing across the plateaus up high with 100 mile views? That was sweet. I can see why people like skiing the Birkebeinerrennet. Might have to do that some time.

Started at the start and off to the triangle. I made a decent plan through the woods and then got a bit lost, found 1, and then got a bit lost going to 2. But I got there, just ahead of the guy who had started two minutes behind me. 2 to 3 was a long leg, and instead of racing my own race, I looked around and followed people up small trails, up, up and over the top of the mountain. I had no idea where we were until we got to a big trail junction and then I was annoyed because it meant a long narrow trail descent, good for breaking skis and bodies. I had wanted to go around, and should have, but didn't. Damn.

Slowly down the hill, and on to the big trails. I caught the Austrian on the climb and lead him in to 3, and then down the super-sketchy-but-there's-no-other-option hill to 4, and I let him go ahead, and I fell. And so did the guy behind me. The guy behind him made it through.

Then we all trained up and I dropped off a bit to go to 5, and punched 5, and went to 6, and there weren't that many tracks but hey the route was right to 6, and punched 6, and then went to 7 and saw people coming at me and, ugh, I'd gone 7-6-5, not 5-6-7. It wasn't a huge error—they were sort of in a loop—but certainly sub-optimal. So it was off to 5 for me, and I saw Adrian, and he took a different route choice, and mine was better (helped to know the trails) back to 6 and 7.

7 to 8 was another long leg back up the mountain and this time there was no going straight up a narrow trail, no, thank you. Up the wide trails, V1, V2, up to the top and to the control. Map flip!

Then down to #1, navigating well, and in to the maze. I got messed up with the maze (but it was fun, and so beautiful) but just went south (towards the sun) and reoriented off of the shape of the intersections, found the control, and was off to 3 and 4. 4-5 was a long leg and this time I went around the mountain. Much better. 9 or 10 fewer contours and a descent on the big trail. Recaught the Austrian and put him in my wake.

I didn't really like the 5-6-7 skiing. 5 was fine, but 5-6 was okay. I went high, which was dumb, and then from 6 to 7 took the big trail, because I wanted a break from the woods. Probably slower, but probably saner. I didn't get the point of 7, it seems everyone went up to the control steeply from the big trail and then back down to it; no real route choice. And 8 was a guy on a snowmobile.

8-9 I stayed on the green trails and off of the roads and had a good ski on the big trails, and saw Adrian at the bottom and realized I was going to 13, not 9, but stayed the course and changed a bit in the maze to 9. 9-10 I got a bit confused but found my way through the smaller maze to get to the control. Felt good about my generalization from 10 to 11 (all lefts until a field, cross the road) and started passing people with higher numbers from time to time, which felt okay. Probably should have gone a trail higher to 11, then got a bit lost to 12, starting to get tired, but I'd been on the trail to 13, so that was okay. 13 to 14 I skied low to the big trail, climbed some and then had a mostly contour/downhill ski to 14. 15 I took the trail down to the road, the road to the big trail, and then counted intersections off the big trail to five, and went in to the woods: that felt good. To 16 I followed the narrow trail on a road, and mostly got 17 well except for a bobble at the end. 18 was spectator control, down the hill, on to the barely-readable-at-1:15k small trails near the stadium, same damn downhill as yesterday, but not as sketchy, and in to the stadium.

This was great fun. I pushed harder on some parts, but lost a lot of time navigating poorly and pussyfooting down hills. Well, it's really only my second day doing this. Yup, World Champs.

Since pretty much all of the course was closed to skiing because RACE, I went for a run down the road. Nice Norwegians gave me plenty of room YOU HEAR THAT BOSTON?!

Anyway, had some very minor stomach issues earlier but they seemed to shake out. Getting ready for race.

World Ski Orienteering Championships! This race was a lot of fun, which is kind of the point. I've never skied narrow Euro trails before, so my goals here were to keep contact with the map, punch every control, and not break equipment or myself. And I think I did a decent job of this. Made my start, a few butterflies but surprisingly calm, and I set off to ski.

I took the start triangle bit slowly since it looked gnarly with a lot of people having skied it, and then set out to find the first control. Then crossed the stream to the second, well, and the third, decently. Not skiing fast, but not making mistakes. The fourth I took the "navigate off of features not trails" too much to heart and navigated towards the big trail, so I had to figure out where I was off of that, but it wasn't bad. Mantra for tomorrow: Make a plan.

5-6-7-8 weren't too bad, I was seeing a few other skiers but wasn't being passed by tons yet. Long leg to 9 and I too the big trail which may not have been the most perfect route choice but certainly easier than trying to navigate the little ones. I didn't take the best route in to 9; going further north would have been better, I think, and then got off course going to 10 and had to reorient myself a bit. But did that okay. 11 was okay, and hen there was a scary downhill on a "wide" but really not wide trail to 12, the road crossing, and a ski-snapping (for someone else, anyway) whoopiewoo to the spectator control, and then the big downhill from there.

Skiing deliberately to 13-14, and I went to 15 but came in way below it and had to climb a contour or two; tough to see that even on the 1:5000 map, but not a good ski-through route. Then two gnarly downhills to the finish—a more conservative route choice would have been to ride the esker back to the big trails and take them to the finish, the go control and the finish. I was the first one out for M21, and maybe the fourth or fifth in, and #2 came in a while after, so NOT LAST.

So, a good first race. I didn't ski fast, but I kept contact with the map, didn't get lost, and accomplished all my goals. Goal for the long tomorrow: same as today, but apply more speed. Speed is good.

C • Nice going! 1

Skiing around in circles for a while to cool down, nowhere to go, but needed to cool down.

They started awards and there were six separate award ceremonies (M and F for Euro youth, Juniors and Seniors) and that included six people getting their names called, prizes, etc and then the flag raising and national anthems. I said eff this and went to ski the narrow trails, did for 20 minutes, then came back and they were still giving out the W21 with the M21 still to come. Yay, skio. So much fun to just tool around, although I got a look from the control picker upper.

So that happened. It was a training day, and they held the model event open, and I wasn't skiing the one man one woman mixed relay, so it was just time to ski around and around the few narrow trails we could ski on. So I did. I had a GoPro on to show people what ski-o looks like, and the trails were icy, so it was fun.

Model event ad Budor. Drove up to the stadium and had to ski in a small area within the embargo. They did have signs at the edge to keep you out of competition areas. Enough narrow trails to have fun, and they're all well-groomed and really not that bad to ski on. A few steep hills up and down, and a few other teams skiing around The touch-free punching is great. Skied most if not all of the trails, then discussed how to figure out how to ski all of the trails with as little skiing as possible (or without repetition, but that was quickly quashed as impossible.

Beautiful morning, no races, and time to ski, so I decided to go and ski. I climbed up to Holmenkollen again, this time with not many people on the trails (and no racers). Skied around the race trails there, which were beautifully groomed, and skiing around the jump and the stadium is just amazing. I didn't have my phone, so no pictures, but amazing views over Oslo. Skiing in the city is just superb; totally worth a trip even without Ski-O.

Then circled back and went mostly screaming down the hills to Sognsvann. A few stretches where I had to double pole in the tracks, but mostly just great skiing.

Up to Gasbu to ski on the trails there. Started up a big hill, then went round and round. Lots of snow, and pretty fun trails, plus a World Cup-level stadium with bridges and stuff. I had a map, but there were a lot more trails than on the map.

SKI!

So, full flight to EWR, flew right over People's Forest and all the snow. Then an easy flight to OSL, had a row to myself, stretched out and slept for a few hours. Not enough. Train to Oslo with a bunch of Midwesterners coming back from a Norwegian ski vacation ("see you at the Birkie"), staying with members of the O/SkiO team. They set me towards the trails after a couple hours of chilling out, and pointed me in the direction of the Holmenkollen.

Everyone on the Metro has skis. Everyone. Like, three weird tight jeans eurotrashy guys and everyone else has skis. Then three stops before the Holmenkollen, 100 people with toboggans get on to ride up to the top of the sled run. Got off at Holmenkollen, walked up by the ski jump. Marathon race ending, so I missed the end of the race, and then skied along the course, having forgotten a map. Memory-O.

Then there were a bunch of juniors warming up. Then I realized that I was trying to avoid two races, including a junior race with waves of skiers going every five minutes all day long. Great. Trails are amazing, and all too soon, I was back where I was staying (at a different Metro line). So I went back up in to the hills, lots of DPing, then down along the race again.

Then I took a nap, dinner, bed. Jet lag, die.

Out to ski in the morning. It was snowing again, pretty hard, and warm and wet snow. So slow at Weston. Double poling down hills. Some poor sap ("new skier" with a full Salomon setup) was trying to classic ski with wax. It was hairies condition.

Then packing, then Oslo! Also, it was cold and windy in the evening.

How do I log snow shoveling? Because that is what I did today.

Took the T to Worlds: good decision! Traffic in the city was apocalyptic: one of our buses took 2 hours to go one mile. Although if I'd walked home (no buses moving, no bike at work, Hubway still shut) I could have probably taken back roads out of Cambridgeport and then had clear sailing: no one could get to the highways. I texted Alex from Woodland: was she near Riverside to pick me up? No, she was still in Charlestown. Okay, walking it is.

Warm up and cool down from Worlds. Only had time to get one lap in at the start and didn't feel great. Afterwards it had radiationally cooled and I was freezing, so one lap and I escaped inside. Got a ride home, which was great.

8k worlds, three laps including the flats. I even had waxed, soft skis, but it was slow and I wasn't feeling great. Stayed with the lead group for about a lap, then dropped off to ski with Morgan and Alex, but they dropped me and I was alone for the end of the last lap. Oh, well.

Oh look it snowed again. Supposed to get 10-14, we got 16-18 instead. Wow! So much snow! More in a week than Boston has ever had before, basically, by a lot.

Also, the Sportsball game last night was very exciting, and then I stayed up way too late watching post-sportsball, and then I had to wake up early to deal with work stuff, and then I went back to sleep. Snowstorm!

Went out to Windblown and got there early enough that it wasn't too crowded. Had a red map from a couple of years ago and most of the narrow trails were groomed. I skied it trying to take narrow trail options where possible, and they were pretty good narrow trails. I also was lucky enough that I didn't ski in to any snowshoers at high speed. Probably about half on narrow trails, which is some good training for me, especially with hills involved.

Then I did the course backwards. More narrow trails! Still not too crowded. Made a mistake on 7 but part of that was avoiding people congregating on the trails. Have to not do that next week.

Then went for a ski. Found all the hills and skied up and Tele'd down them. Mostly very good, a couple scratchy areas.