Saturday Mar 3 |
 | Note | |
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| yea 23 hours on a plane...
man I wish I had some buttered oatmeal.
photos, mostly of the relay. |
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| C • Welcome back -- snooze time? ... 7 |
Friday Mar 2 |
| ski-o race 1:00:00 [4]12 km (5:00 / km) | |
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| ski-woc relay. More new snow overnight, and at about +1C when I started. It was raining for a bit while I was waiting, and snowed during most of the course. Did the 3rd leg, and started about 100 meters in front of the winner (who was finishing). Saw no one the entire time. The single track downhills were exciting because of all the berms piled up, it made cornering interesting. Had a pretty ginormous mistake that let me climb the wrong side of a 5 contour gully, probably lost 5 minutes there. Then I broke the strap off one of my poles going up a hill, which made the rest of the double poling a little tough. |
Thursday Mar 1 |
| ski-o race 1:20:00 [4]15 km (5:20 / km) | |
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| ski-woc middle. A lot warmer today (HF7), but got some new snow overnight, so things were a little choppy. Two maps of 7 and 8 km. Drew the lucky first start number again, but at least this one had both an interval start and a map exchange, so there were people around (and skied-in tracks) on the second loop. This one had a couple of wicked steep double pole sections, which my poor arms didn't really like. Got a little confused in one section of very detailed single tracks - it didn't end up as a mistake, but worthy of a little hesitation. But overall it went pretty good, I'm finally starting to get the hang of this stuff. |
Wednesday Feb 28 |
| ski-o 30:00 [2]6 km (5:00 / km) | |
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| rest day. Went over to the event center and did the ski-o-athlon. Basically it was a 2km skate loop that was marked in the terrain but not on the map, with lots of controls along it (no control numbers). For each time around the loop (3 laps, same loop) you got a map with 4 controls on it and had to ski the loop and punch the right controls. At each map exchange you downloaded the si card and they told you how many you got wrong, and you got an 80m penalty loop for each one. Managed to go 3/4, 2/4, and 4/4.
We decided that if you really wanted to race at this you just ignore the controls and sprint the whole loop, since stopping to punch was about as fast as a penalty loop, and the possibility of getting one wrong and having to do the penalty anyway made it not worth it. So it needs a longer penalty loop. Still fun for a rest day though. |
Tuesday Feb 27 |
| ski-o race 2:22:00 [4]30 km (4:44 / km) | |
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| ski-woc long. 3 maps of about 10k each. Had a stupid turning mistake on the last loop that cost about 5 minutes, but otherwise the navigation was pretty straight forward. Warmed up a little from yesterday, maybe -15C? |
Monday Feb 26 |
| ski-o race 24:00 [5]5 km (4:48 / km) | |
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| ski-woc sprint race. Wicked cold (minus a lot C) so LF4. Drew the first start number, so not only did I have no idea what I was doing, but I got to do it first. Many things went by too fast, especially on the second half of the course. In hindsight (now that the week is over) I think I could do this a lot faster just from learning to read the maps better and knowing what speeds are possible on what trails. |
Sunday Feb 25 |
| Note | |
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| ski-woc in russia |
| ski-o 1:30:00 [2]10 km (9:00 / km) | |
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| Model event. Cold and windy, slow snow. |