Training Log Archive: Ari-o

We were up reasonably early to some light snow, and should have skied earlier, but dickered around a bit. The plan was to ski to the top of Wildcat on the Wildcat Valley Trail and then down. (I'd thought about going down to the road, thumbing over to Wildcat, skinning up there and skiing down, but turns out Wildcat was super windy and icy and such, so that would have been pretty miserable. Still a little bummed I didn't kill myself the day before MSA and skin up Wildcat after skiing the Sherbie).

Up to Prospect, skins on and a skin up the trail in a couple inches of new snow. We passed people setting tracks ahead of us and pushed on to the summit. Mostly gradual and relatively easy, and the new snow made it seem doable coming down (the metal edges help). The fact that I did this at age 13 on used nordic skis with friggin' three-pin bindings is insane, although I think we did it in a lot of powder so it was slower. We stopped just below the summit where we found a helmet that had rolled down on to the trail to layer up, delivered the helmet to ski patrol, ran up to the summit summit, and then skied down.

The ski down was great! A couple of sketchy spots, and I was certainly slower than Lincoln and Jess, but lots of fun. Flew through the birch glades, nice turns in there, and then on to the groomed trails, which had a couple inches of powder on top. We absolutely flew down those trails—what fun!—and back to the car for the roads to be clear!

Up to Jackson, so long ski time. Out Ellis, up North Hall, then down. Grooming okay, snow okay, but certainly not perfect. Keeney was really nice, should have just skied there. By the time Jess and I got to the top, we were pretty cold and cooked, but she suggested we ski down the Keeney because it's more fun (oh, and a bit of extra climb at the bottom) so we were extra cooked. But hey I wanted to get 150 minutes of skating in, so success?

Not good at time management when I don't have much structure, it seems. Last week before traffic. And so I ran, did 3x3 along the river. Fastest was chasing someone down who passed me during a rest.

Running just behind a couple of guys along the river back along Camb Pkwy. Of course, they perfectly hit the cross button at the end of Mem Drive so I scurried across and hit the next one.

I still want to implement a little bluetooth device you can run along with which will sense your speed and turn the light for you just at the right time. Would be more efficient for everyone.

Long(ish) ski at Weston. Again got bogged down at meetings until it was late enough to avoid the traffic and then the high schoolers; really only the Andy-Frank clinic was the only traffic. I tried to ski nicely when I went by.

Was going to ski, then had meetings go all afternoon after being up late (so no NP) doing work on a project.

Out to Weston to warm up, and then about 45 minutes after the race skiing around with John and Cary Brandon and well there are a lot of Colby kids out here.

Five laps of the course tonight. With 2" of new snow and snow guns, it was reasonably fast and reasonably soft. So out came the soft skis! They were running well during the warm up and I was happy to have them.

I was invited to nascar start with John and Frank and led out to the pump, then led out over the first hill. Sensing some commotion behind, I pushed the pace around the first loop and into the second mostly to try to thin the pack out, and I think it worked, but John was drafting and flew by, as did Frank, and then I'd burned too many matches and lost them on Mount Foljms.

Rob came flying by on the flats—he must have waxed his skis—and I was in a pack with Steven and Andy. We dropped Andy on a climb on the fourth lap and closed the gap with the pack, but could never really jump on. There was a lot of traffic during the race, too, both people warming up and people getting lapped and not clearing the track. I think Andy needs to be pretty clear next week about this. Since John fell on the last trip up Mt. Foljms when someone didn't clear the way ahead of the pack, I assume he will ask/tell Andy to do so. It would be nice to get some natural snow to use the flats, which renders the whole lapping thing a bit more moot, but we have what we have.

Finished 5th, but only about 15 seconds off the lead. I feel like I should go full master blaster and wax my skis before next week's race, because that's the kind of margin where some fluoros might help.

Out to Weston to ski around on the Real Weston Conditions there. They'd groomed, so it was mostly sugar, but some ice. Lovely. A bit no poles, and then some skating to loosen up after the weekend still. Feeling better. At the end it started flurrying, but now there's a nice band of snow sitting basically on top of the Ski Track, so there may be pretty okay skiing tomorrow. The webcam shows a lovely combination of falling snow and blowing snow.