Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Wild goose chase to see northern lights running up Mount Watatic in the dark. Didn't see anything, except a guy who'd skinned up. One day too late. Boo. But night hiking!

Awesome day at the Sugarloaf Marathon. Last year the marathon course melted out as the race went on, this year was the COMPLETE opposite. Temps around 20, sunny but solidly frozen. Good times.

The drive up was a little snowy and an inch of fresh snow meant I could use the soft (fast) skis, although the course wasn't super fast. I got to the start pen after a short warm-up with 3 minutes to spare, which meant I was in the back. AND I got boxed out. I wound up behind Jess and Viktoria and—yeah, that wasn't happening.

I caught and dropped a group at the first feed and shot down the first downhill and caught an old dude in front of me and had to scrub speed and scrubbed a soft spot and yardsaled across the trail. But I full-on barrel-rolled and popped up basically on to my skis on the edge of the trail—a perfect fall.

I soon got behind a group of girls from _____ college who were going really slow right down the middle of the trail. I stayed behind them way too long and finally passed them on an uphill and got yelled at by the master there who I also dropped like a bad metaphor. At the lap I caught a group of four, and pretty quickly wound up skiing behind a skier Williams pants. Not that fast, but I had burned a bunch of matches and could use the ride.

I offered to pull later in the lap and she turned to me and said, "wait, are you Ari?" I had worked with her sister a couple falls ago at Mizpah Spring Hut; we've met a few times. So we had a grand old time skiing together for the rest of the race, not seeing anyone in front of or behind us. In fact, one person finished within six minutes in front of us. We didn't push the pace, but had a very lovely end of the season Sunday ski. The race course is only 40k or so (let's say 42) and I finished in 2:12, respectable but not fast. Got schooled by a bunch of college boys, but as Lincoln pointed out to me: "you have a job."

That's the sad truth. But it was a great day on the skiings.

Cool down after the race with Emily and we ran in to—completely randomly!—a former coworker of mine. She was no-poles skiing for fun. I mostly no-poled around the course. It was still in the 20s and just really fantastic skiing.

Skied up to the Sugarloaf base, with a couple breaks for some turns, for burgers. We finished right at 4 and we should have skied farther up the now-closed mountain for fun and awesomeness. Came ripping down a downhill slope and through a super-sketch tunnel before we turned back on to the nordic trails.

Ugh. Still sore from going too hard on Monday (!) doing core. Which means I am WEAK where I need to be strong. Did some stretching, hopefully I won't go in to a 50k with a bad back.

The NP this morning was 3x 19 stadia. I was all about that until about two-thirds of the way through the second one, when I realized I am skiing 50k on Saturday and want to be able to walk tomorrow. So I valiantly gave up. Felt pretty good though … it was about 40 so I was down to just shorts by the second time through.

Oh god so sore. Need to do more core so this doesn't happen and so I can ski faster.

Sore from core/circuits yesterday and it is raining and I haven't had a good day off in a while, so, day off.

First Monday November Project. Ran to work, basically, with a pack. Pack was not that comfortable.

Destination Deck was a 20 minute circuit, 5x on each of burpees, air squats, mountain climbers and high walks. 45 on, 15 off. Brogan yelled at me for my poor mountain climber form.

C • Destination Deck 2

Had a meeting near Windblown. Went to Windblown. It was SUPER slow and pretty soft but certainly skatable. I decided to play on the mountain, so I got 1250+ feet of climbing in, and took some sweet turns down the open slope. I want it to get cold! (That's coming.) Sort of fake L3 because I was bonking the whole time but still trying to go fast on the slow, sucky snow.

In order to be healthy, I ate peanut M&Ms and potato chips for lunch and forgot my drink belt. Good times!