Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Skating lesson! It read -4 in the hollow leading up to Notchview but INVERSION it was … +1 at Notchview. And there was no one there. So we had the trails to ourselves. Mel was plenty warm learning to skate, I had a puffy on and my "arctic split mitts" thank you Toko, I now have gloves good for teaching speed at 0˚. With some pickups. She started to get things by an hour out; we realized we should probably let her ski for an hour, warm up, and then do some suggestion things. Snow nearby would help a lot. Incoming!

Then I skied out and around one of the far fields, then down and up the Bumpus Trail which reminded me of skiing down a chute on a narrow trail and then up a narrow trail, and then around and in. Warmer now, more people.

But I couldn't let such good classic conditions go to waste. So off to classic. I started out not knowing if I needed more kick, got to the first little stride-y section, slipped, poled the back of my ski, and did a full, spread-eagle faceplant. Luckily the snow was powdery. No one even there to see it.

But with some kick, the skiing was great. I stayed mostly on the backcountry trails and the narrow groomed trails. They're fun! Most could probably have a groomer pulled and be ski-o trails, but not that much of a network. Not that that should keep us from it.

At one point on a narrow groomer, I was going up a hill, and passing two shufflers who were in the track. Coming down the hill was a skier at a high rate of speed. I saw her, and stepped off to the left, into the ungroomed. She thanked me, and the shufflers thought they were being thanked and gave a very sincere "you're welcome."

Over Judges, which was good fun, then back around on some narrow trails, back over Judges (also fun) and back. Lots more people out to slalom, though. Parking lot was full.

But I wasn't done.

Home via Dublin only adds about 20 miles and an hour, and the fastest (although not the most direct) route goes by the best falafel this side of Jerusalem.

Since it was in Vermont, I had to go incognito. I put on a false disguise, and fake green plates on my Prius (the car checks out, at least, although I should have disguised it as a Subaru). Lots of other red and white plates on the road. I evaded border patrol to make the pickup, and after the handout shot out of Brattleboro at 100 mph, with several Super Troopers in tow. But at the new bridge on Route 9, I screeched around the corner and onto the bridge just as they got out of their cars. They tried to shoot out my tires, but I evaded the shots and escaped into New Hampshire unscathed. Live free or die!

(Really, though, I wore two masks and had a recent negative test. You're welcome, Vermonters.)

Dublin was nice, and I got there just as everyone was leaving. It's light until after 5 now!

C • Falafel 2

So best laid plans …

The plan was to go out to Notchview, ski, stay in NoHo, then go skin Berkshire East Sunday morning, Mel then back to Boston for science, and I'd go to Dublin on the way home. So two cars were taken.

Out the Pike I get a call that she'd forgotten her AT boots. It was actually not me who did this!

So, it was Notchview. We went striding, her on her old fishscales which are very slow, me on perfect blue wax, so there was lots of out-and-backing ("golden retrievering") and some extra loops. Plus, the fishscales don't do so hot on cold powder, so she was struggling with kick.

"Aha, I said, I have wax!" This was the right solution, except I put it on too much of her kick zone, so she had too much kick (I don't think those skis have any camber, and we should buy her skin skis). So she could run up the hills, but not so much down them.

This was a moderate failure.

I went for a loop on my own to work up a sweat.

Wooo Dublin! Perfect. Full moon, so I barely needed a headlamp. Not warm, though. Skied down to the store (PB groomed but dirty with a couple icy spots) and the Perimeter wasn't groomed, so I just went back up. One 12 minute mile, but looking at that I climbed 100m and crossed a road, so that's okay. Came back through the skied in track through the woods to the north which would be a nice place to groom a maze although someone else owns it.

Jogarooing around while dinner was a-makin'

Run from LivableStreets office to Harvard for a test. Basically didn't break stride through the test center, three minutes to get through it.

AP is having trouble with activity types, thinking this was a trail run. Then some very confused GPS, but mostly on the way out, before I ran through the Harvard station.

Posted as a trail run. Way too much elevation. Bunch of weird blips. Maybe from the snow? Drove out in the snow and it dumped the whole time. No wind, big flakes in the floodlights, beautiful.

Moar Worlds! Very different to do an interval start on slow snow in falling natural snow. My skis were running pretty well, they're too cold but the flex is right for this kind of snow. I started maybe 30s behind Heiner (I think) and caught him along the way, got passed by John but I'm not sure which lap he was on. Had a lot of trouble getting enough air through the buff and may have dropped it when not near people just to not choke on it as it got wet. Ick. But other than that, yay, snow! Up to a 0.8 mi = 1.3 km loop, hopefully their next trick once it is cold again on Friday is to go blow in Mount Weston because it would be the first time we'd be up and down Mount Weston since 2019.

Probably not quite enough snow to groom the rest of the course, or Great Brook. But a start. And should be great for Green's/Dublin/Notchview/Thunderbolt.

C • Wet buff 3

Cool down ski. I was only going to do a lap or two but the skiing was beautiful and fun and nice and the driving probably terrible, so I did four. Nice and easy. Natural snow is a good thing.

Not sure why this loaded as a trail run, but anyway … just out for a jogaroo, in shorts, but it was kind of chilly for that. GPS went way off along the way, maybe that's the thing.

So I was running down the pier by the sidewalk catching up on and slowly passing another runner, probably about 1 min/mi pace faster. I give him clear berth to the side but as I pass, he accelerates, matching my pace. Which is annoying, obviously. So I dial up the pace, just a little, and he matches that, then drops off, and says "you're not supposed to pass grandpa."

At this point I was pretty mad, and just went into a dead sprint for about 100m to get away from him.

A few comments:

1. I guess he was trying to be funny. It's one thing to get passed by someone and say what he did. It's another to do the "try to keep up" annoying thing and then say it.

2. When people are basically dressed in a burqa, how do I know how old they are?

3. Oh, also, PANDEMIC. So maybe don't run right next to me, guy?

Usually, the people who try to keep up with someone passing them are young, not-that-in-shape men getting passed by women. Melissa and I used to do this to guys along the Esplanade (she'd run past someone, they'd try to keep up, she'd accelerate and drop him, it was hilarious). But this seemed completely unnecessary.

I hope when I am an M6 or whatever I'm not that much of a dink.